AAI

This week’s reading was so incredibly dense that it is hard to decide on a focus or specific place to start for a discussion. I feel like these readings could produce weeks of discussion and topics! I have decided to look at the AAI used in both Seigel and Harris. My understanding is that the Adult Attachment Interview is an interview given to adults to understand the attachment they had to their parents in early childhood. It is fascinating to me that this could so clearly predict the attachment the child of these parents will have to them and what this says about the child’s emotional development.
According to Harris, the “coherence and degree of reflection with which a child’s mother talked about her own attachment was a predictor of later performance by her child on the assessment of emotion understanding.” (pg. 284) Harris also states that the children were tested on situations to the extent in which they could provoke a mixture of positive and negative feelings.
Harris then offers two interpretations of this AAI study. The first is according to attachment theory and says that the mother’s coherence and sensitivity will help in secure attachment with the child that will then foster the child’s understanding of emotion. The second interpretation is based in the theory that family talk about emotion will facilitate a child’s open expression, communication and acknowledgment of emtotion. (284)
It seems to me that these two can co-exist and actually fit together quite nicely. It would seem that a caregiver who has a coherence and sensitivity in regards to emotion will be more capable of and more likely to talk to their child about emotion. Also, understanding and being more comfortable with emotional expression themselves, it seems not too far fetched to say that they would be better able to interperate and understand the childs non-verbal expression of emotion and be more responsive to that. This responsivity seems to me to be a form of non-verbal talk. So, with a caregiver who has a more cohesive sense of emotion, there would be both more “talk” and more secure attachment. With this secure attachment and better emotional understanding, this child is more likely to have a secure attachment with their future children. It seems to be a continuing cycle.
This brings us to the Siegal article on several points. First, verbal or non-verbal “talk” could be seen as the “collaborative interpersonal interaction” that Siegal mentions as the key to healthy development (Siegal, 72). It is this interpersonal connection, found in secure attachment, that the circuits regulating emotional and social functioning are ingrained. Development is about the creation of specific circuits. (73) So it follows that interpersonal relationships are key to development.
Second, Siegal also discusses the transfer of trauma across generations (88). Integration is key in all respects to Siegals understanding of emotion and emotional experience. He suggests here that psychotherapeutic interventions would promote neural integration and promote better self-regulation and a coherent self-understanding. AAI, it seems, could be said as testing for internal integration.
Following from all of this it seems that attachment theories and talk theories do not contradict one another but are pieces of the larger answer.


Question:
Have any of the topics in this weeks reading addressed parents that are not biological? Has the AAI test been given to caregives who are not biological parents for example?
It seems to me that this would tell us a good deal about how emotions develop. Could it be that past traumatic responses in our genetic histories affect the way we develop emotion or is it totally a result of our social interactions with our parents.
This weeks readings also address the development of some attachments before birth, such as a mothers smell. Does it cause emotional stress for the child to be separated from this prenatal connection? Then the Hamlin reading addresses the elements of what may cause distress at the separation of mother and child. It seems that many of the elements mentioned in the Hamilin reading would not be problematic with a parent who adopted but the prenatal attachments could cause problems.