When John Bowlby studied the consequences of early separation after the Second World War, he came across something the psychology of the day had underrated: children separated from their caregivers showed not only hunger and cold but deep emotional distress.
Out of this grew attachment theory: an innate system that seeks closeness to a familiar person when danger or uncertainty appears — and that needs security as a base for exploration and learning.
Secure and insecure patterns
Mary Ainsworth made the concept measurable with the "Strange Situation" test. Small children react differently to brief separations and reunions: some are quickly soothed and go back to exploring (secure attachment), others avoid the caregiver or cling excessively.
These patterns — secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-ambivalent and, added later, disorganised — are not mere snapshots. They reflect the sensitivity the child has experienced: how promptly, how appropriately and how consistently does the caregiver respond to the child's signals?
A large meta-analysis covering more than 22,000 child–caregiver pairs (Madigan et al., 2024) confirms it: what predicts attachment security is the caregiver's sensitivity, not feeding as such. This holds with similar strength for mothers and fathers. Harlow's classic monkey experiments and later studies had already shown that comfort and physical closeness matter more than the supply of food.
Method What is the Strange Situation?
A laboratory observation of about twenty minutes in eight short episodes. The child is in the room first with the caregiver, then with a stranger; two brief separations and two reunions follow. What is rated is not the crying during separation but the behaviour at reunion: can the child be soothed, and does it return to play afterwards?
From childhood into adulthood
Attachment patterns do not stay behind in childhood. Adults show analogous styles in romantic relationships and friendships: anxious-clinging, avoidant-distant or secure-autonomous.
Longitudinal studies such as the NICHD study follow children from their first months of life and find links between early attachment and later relationships, emotion regulation and mental health. Insecure attachment partly mediates the path from early life adversity to anxiety, depression and lower life satisfaction in adulthood.
Importantly, attachment can change. Randomised controlled trials show that interventions strengthening caregivers' sensitivity raise attachment security and can soften the negative consequences of early adversity. The same holds for therapeutic work with adults: a secure therapeutic relationship can act as a "corrective emotional experience".
Culture and universality
Is secure attachment a Western ideal? Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) and later cross-cultural work find that secure attachment is the most common form in every country studied. The shares of insecure patterns do vary, though — more avoidant in individualist cultures, more ambivalent in collectivist ones.
Differences within countries are often larger than those between countries. That speaks for a universal attachment system which is shaped differently by culture.
Attachment theory explains why early experiences leave such stubborn traces — and why they are nonetheless not destiny.
It ties psychoanalysis (the weight of early relationships) to ethology, developmental psychology and, today, social neuroscience.
What is this article based on?
This piece draws on Bindungstheorie, a review written for Parilem by Prof. Dr. Dilek Kılıç.
- Bowlby, J. Attachment and Loss (the foundational works on attachment theory).
- Ainsworth, M. D. S. et al. The Strange Situation and the concept of sensitivity.
- Madigan, S. et al. (2024). Meta-analysis on sensitivity and attachment security (N > 22,000 pairs).
- Fraley, R. C. et al. Longitudinal studies (including NICHD) on early attachment and later outcomes.
- Van IJzendoorn, M. H. & Kroonenberg, P. M. (1988). Cross-cultural patterns of attachment.
- Cassidy, J. & Shaver, P. R. (eds.). Handbook of Attachment.
- Reviews of attachment-based interventions and early life adversity (including recent RCTs).
Dilek Kılıç
Works on neurology at Heidelberg University. Runs joint projects with India.
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