Introduction Pregnancy and birth form the beginning of an on-going interaction between mother and infant, which involves intersubjective communication (Stern, 1985). This mutual interaction forms the basis of an emotional connection or attachment that evolves with the growing and interrelated perceptual, cognitive and motor capacities of the infant and which is highly dependant upon the proficiency and emotional background of the primary caregiver. This initial and most important attachment creates a kind of “mental map” for the infant which serves as a model for all future relationships and a subconscious reference in future social interactions (Hazan and Shaver, 1987).
Communication between infant and mother (the most likely if not exclusive caregiver) is mediated through a range of physical stimuli. This is a two-way communication, which has evolved through selective pressure in order to maximize the infant’s chances at survival, by eliciting a protective-caring response in the caregiver, and a clinging-demanding response in the newborn. Physical closeness and constant attentiveness of the caregiver enables the infant’s protection from environmental, predatorial and even same-species dangers. The process of filial imprinting has evolved for the same reason, to compel the neonate to physical proximity to its protector, thus increasing the chances for its genes to survive and pass on.
Further and ongoing interaction between infant and caregiver leads to a more complex emotional attachment, which is unique to social animals. This further complication of the emotional mindset of the infant serves a different end than its mere survival, yet is completely essential for the neonate’s ability to mature into a healthy, productive and vibrant adult.
In his Theory of Attachment, John Bowlby pointed out a behavioral system, which leads to this sort of emotional bonding by specific and predictable means, and stressed the importance of a correct and informed approach to emotional attachment by the caregiver to its offspring’s mental well being (Bowlby, 1969). The mechanisms of emotional attachment were extensively researched by H.F. Harlow in an elegant series of experiments with Macaque monkeys in which the neonates were separated from their natural mothers and reared using mother surrogates under various conditions. Infant monkeys were found to have special needs and requirements for healthy mental development that were in some cases previously unpredictable and occasionally counter-intuitive. Contact and comfort appeared to be most important in the development of attachment, unlike the views of learning theorists and psychoanalysts who regarded attachment mainly as a function of feeding (Harlow, 1959). Out of a history of consistent, sensitive and responsive care, the attachment figure serves the infant as a “base of operations”, a secure and stable starting point across time and distance, which the growing baby uses to explore its world and expand its consciousness. The existence of such a secure base enables the child to develop and thrive, just as the lack of it may have a severe adverse affect on the infant’s ability to cope with life’s challenges on an individual and social level. Through an experiment called “The Strange Situation”, researchers such as Ainsworth and others have determined four major patterns of attachment, which are derived from the emotional bond created between the infant and its caregiver: secure, anxious/avoidant, anxious/ambivalent and anxious/disorganized/disoriented (Ainsworth et al., 1978). These patterns are chiefly the result of the caregiver’s ability (or lack of) to provide the infant with the care and attention it needs (and not so much the neonate’s innate tendencies to socialize) and have a central and lasting impact on every relationship it will enter in henceforth, indeed, may even be used to predict the person’s behavior in the relationship, and its outcome. Research has shown that caregivers who fall into one of the four categories will tend to raise their children so that they too in time will fall into that category, and so on into future generations, creating a cycle which shapes the society we live in and influences the fate of the world, for better…or worse.