Assessing Disorganized Attachment Behaviour in Children lays out an evidence-based model for working with and assessing children with disorganized attachment and their adult carers: families whose extreme, erratic and disturbing behaviour can make them perplexing and frustrating to work with. The model is designed to identify key indicators and explanatory mechanisms of child maltreatment: disorganized attachment in the child, a parent's unresolved loss or trauma, disconnected and extremely insensitive parenting, and low parental mentalisation. The book also outlines ways of assessing children for disorganized attachment and carer capacity, and proposes interventions. Accessible and practical, this book is essential reading for child protection professionals.

Disorganized attachment, the most extreme form of insecure attachment, can develop in a child when the person who is meant to protect them becomes a source of danger. This book provides a comprehensive text on disorganized attachment.

As Bowlby himself points out in his introduction to this seminal childcare book, to be a successful parent means a lot of very hard work. Giving time and attention to children means sacrificing other interests and activities, but for many people today these are unwelcome truths. Bowlby’s work showed that the early interactions between infant and caregiver have a profound impact on an infant's social, emotional, and intellectual growth. Controversial yet powerfully influential to this day, this classic collection of Bowlby’s lectures offers important guidelines for child rearing based on the crucial role of early relationships.

Since 1986, when disorganized attachment was first defined by Mary Main and Judith Solomon, a great deal of interest has been shown in this addition to the standard Ainsworth classification system. This groundbreaking volume brings together eminent researchers and clinicians to present current, original theory and data on the nature of disorganized attachment, its etiology, and its sequelae. Contributors report on the social, psychological, and biological contributions to disorganization. Longitudinal findings are presented on developmental outcomes in middle childhood; special populations are examined, including children with disabilities; and new assessment methodologies are described. Advancing our understanding of a significant subgroup of infants and children with attachment-related difficulties, the volume represents an important contribution to the empirical attachment literature.

This book is a practical guide to caring for children and young people with disorganised attachment and related emotional and psychological difficulties.

In this volume, leading authorities provide a state-of-the-art examination of disorganized attachment: what it is, how it can be identified, and its links to behavioral problems and psychological difficulties in childhood and beyond. The editors offer a fresh perspective on disorganized attachment, not as a characteristic of the infant or child but as the product of a dysregulated and disorganized parent–child relationship. They present cutting-edge research and exemplary treatment approaches. With attention to the subjective experiences of both mothers and children, the book shows how focusing on the caregiving system can advance research and clinical practice.

Ethological attachment theory is a landmark of 20th century social and behavioral sciences theory and research. This new paradigm for understanding primary relationships across the lifespan evolved from John Bowlby’s critique of psychoanalytic drive theory and his own clinical observations, supplemented by his knowledge of fields as diverse as primate ethology, control systems theory, and cognitive psychology. By the time he had written the first volume of his classic Attachment and Loss trilogy, Mary D. Salter Ainsworth’s naturalistic observations in Uganda and Baltimore, and her theoretical and descriptive insights about maternal care and the secure base phenomenon had become integral to attachment theory. Patterns of Attachment reports the methods and key results of Ainsworth’s landmark Baltimore Longitudinal Study. Following upon her naturalistic home observations in Uganda, the Baltimore project yielded a wealth of enduring, benchmark results on the nature of the child’s tie to its primary caregiver and the importance of early experience. It also addressed a wide range of conceptual and methodological issues common to many developmental and longitudinal projects, especially issues of age appropriate assessment, quantifying behavior, and comprehending individual differences. In addition, Ainsworth and her students broke new ground, clarifying and defining new concepts, demonstrating the value of the ethological methods and insights about behavior. Today, as we enter the fourth generation of attachment study, we have a rich and growing catalogue of behavioral and narrative approaches to measuring attachment from infancy to adulthood. Each of them has roots in the Strange Situation and the secure base concept presented in Patterns of Attachment. It inclusion in the Psychology Press Classic Editions series reflects Patterns of Attachment’s continuing significance and insures its availability to new generations of students, researchers, and clinicians.