NEW DIRECTIONS: CLIENT DIVERSITY & CHANGE PROCESSES Joan Laird The format for the final part of Plenary III, titled
NEW DIRECTIONS: CLIENT DIVERSITY & CHANGE PROCESSES, was quite different
from the other presentations, which featured single speakers. In this
session, I moderated a panel of four interesting and dynamic presenters, each
of whom spoke for approximately 15 minutes on a range of topics having to
do with the application of attachment theory. In spite of the late hour
and the fact that we were competing with a wedding banquet for a particular
room (we lost and had to move speakers, conference attendees, and all of the
equipment!), the session was well attended and generated a lively discussion. Notably lacking in an otherwise fine and fascinating
series of presentations up to this point in the conference was any content
on "culture" or "diversity"--ethnic, race, gender,
social class, age, sexual orientation or other--inadvertently promoting
the notion that the principles and processes of attachment are universal.
This panel began to critically examine the relevance and usefulness of attachment
theory for particular populations and for change processes in practice.
These themes were furthered in the final session on Sunday morning with attention
to the place of culture in early attachment relationships and in practice
with violent couples. In the first presentation, Jonathan Mohr, a doctoral candidate in the Counseling Program
at the University of Maryland at College Park who recently completed his dissertation
on attachment-related dynamics in the counseling relationship, spoke on Stigma
and Same-Sex Romantic Attachment, discussing attachment theory in light
of the issues and challenges that confront gay and lesbian people. Scholars
of attachment focused initially on attachment bonds in infant-caregiver relationships.
Although attention has turned more recently to attachment issues in heterosexual
adult romantic relationships, very little work exists on the relevance of
attachment theory for same-sex adult relationships. Mohr argues that
exploring the issues of stigma and oppression that lesbian and gay people
face in this society can provide information helpful not only in better understanding
adult attachments, but such issues as the ways gender and attachment interact
in relationships and the interplay between the attachment system and contextual
forces. Interestingly, homosexuality does not fit easily into the evolutionary
underpinnings of Bowlby's attachment theory, since the central purpose
of strong attachments is reproductive sex and the survival of the fittest.
Bowlby saw same-sex attraction as evidence of an evolutionary "functional
mistake." Nevertheless, several studies suggest that the connections
between attachment styles and relationship quality in gay and lesbian couples
strongly resemble those in heterosexual couples. Mohr went on to describe the extent of continued
stigmatizing of homosexuality as well as presenting current statistics on
the very high rates of various kinds of abuse perpetrated against lesbian
and gay people in this society, ranging from verbal insults and threats to
physical violence. He asked, "How do gay and lesbian responses
to stigma and abuse affect same-sex couple relationships?" Using
the experiences of two couples to illuminate some of his ideas, Mohr
concludes that differences in internalized homonegativity in gay and lesbian
people, that is, differential responses to social stress and oppression like
fear and anxiety, intersect with attachment-related processes to help explain
both the sources of and solutions to fear in individuals and thus in adult
same-sex attachments. To what degree is stigma management related to
secure or insecure attachments, and to what degree can the successful facing
of stigma and marginalization actually strengthen same-sex attachments? These
are questions requiring further study.
The second speaker, Robert S. Marvin, M.D., is on the faculty
of the Department of Psychiatric Medicine and Director of the Child-Parent
Attachment Center at the University of Virginia. He conducts research
on families who have children with developmental disabilities, child-parent
attachment in families who have adopted children from orphanages in Eastern
Europe, and attachment-based interventions in high-risk parent-child relationships.
Here he spoke on Custody Battles: An Attachment View. After reviewing some of the similarities and differences
between family systems and attachment theories, Marvin went on to describe
disorganized attachments and caregiving patterns, focusing on families who
are divorced or separated and are sharing or trying to share parenting across
two homes. He stressed that the bonds between parents or caregivers
and their children are not identical by any means and every couple has some
difficulty, at times pulling away and at other times becoming closer to their
children. Many children of divorce do well, but in some families the children
become quite disorganized. Three factors seem to lead to more successful
joint custody and care and reduce the risk of attachment ruptures: 1)
Minimal parental conflict; 2) Parents trusting that each will give good care;
and 3) Parents updating each other on important issues. In terms of intervention,
Marvin suggests that parents need to be educated about these issues and the
risks involved for their children if they do not meet these goals. Parents
need to be helped to develop a pattern of trust in each other's parenting,
and they need to be flexible. Moving back and forth, combined with a lack
of trust in each other's parenting by the parents, can be very disorganizing
for children, leading to insecure attachments. Parents need to be flexible
about joint custody and living arrangements as children develop and their
needs change. As every family and couples therapist should know, if
the couple cannot sufficiently work out their relationship around co-parenting,
joint custody will not work. Karen Wampler, Ph.D., the third speaker, is Professor and Director
of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at Texas Tech University, and is
both a clinician and researcher. She offered a lively critique of some
facets of attachment theory in her presentation on In Session Change and
Attachment Style. For one thing, Wampler finds attachment theory "relentlessly"
dyadic, saying that one cannot move from the theory, which focuses on classification
rather than interaction, to the larger systems that surround couples and families.
We need, she believes, broader definitions of attachment that are more sensitive
to cultural context and gender differences. Further, the theory is not
particularly helpful in understanding adults who are not in pair bonds or
individuals and couples without children. Wampler provided a very useful
handout titled "Interpersonal Processes Underlying Attachment
Styles" as well as results of her research on differences in male and
female behaviors according to attachment style.
The final speaker, Cleveland Shields, Ph.D., turned our attention
to Attachment and the Elderly. He is on the faculty at the University
of Rochester Medical Center in the Departments of Family Medicine and Psychiatry.
In describing the research being conducted by him and colleagues at Rochester,
Shields posed the questions, "What are the cognitive aspects of working
models of attachment like among the elderly?" "What are
the associations between their working models of attachment and their adjustment
to cancer?" Cancer poses a threat to the very existence of the
attachment bond in couples. In the Rochester Attachment Interview and Coding
System model, research couples are asked to tell stories of good times and
bad, to share perspectives on experiences such as how they met, to reflect
on changes over time in their relationship as well as on problems they have
faced and how they have solved them, to discuss what compromises they have
made, and to describe the details of what they actually do in meeting life's
contingencies.
Shields hypothesized that couples with more secure attachment styles
would demonstrate better adjustment to cancer. However, the results are mixed
in that gender differences in the degree of attachment security seem to work
differently for husbands and wives. Although avoidant behavior on the
part of both spouses was related to poor adjustment, and secure attachment
on the part of wives was associated with better adjustment, husbands with
anxious attachment styles were more positively related to adjustment of wives
with cancer than those with secure attachment, an unexpected finding. Shields,
like Wampler, suggests that further examination of gender differences in attachment
styles is needed.
The stimulating discussion that followed focused on questions about
how attachment is actually defined and whether or not people are describing
the same phenomenon when they are talking about infants and children, or adults.
One participant asked, "When we talk about attachment, are we talking
about a 'trait' or a 'state'?" Wampler suggested
that this is a "both/and" issue, that attachment may be a trait
but attachments can change over time. Someone else pointed out that
children can have a secure attachment with one caretaker and at the same time
an insecure attachment with the other. Jay Lebow observed that Bowlby, Ainsworth,
and other early attachment theorists were using very specific meanings of
attachment, defining attachment as a trait in the infant itself, and asked,
"Can we make the leap to applying that same concept to couples?"
Others commented that the concept of attachment, seen as one type of affectional
bond, is used by researchers in very precise ways and in clinical work in
more general and metaphoric ways. The afternoon ended with a strong
call for more attention to the importance of culture and cross-cultural study,
pointing the way to conference's final morning. Joan
Laird, MSW Professor
Emerita Smith College School for Social Work |
