reading questions for
- After World War II, how did Bowlby's training
in statistical analysis set him apart from other
psychoanalysts?
- How did his clinical breakthroughs involving
children and parents counter the ideas of Melanie
Klein?
- Why is "separation" a key word in describing
Bowlby's theory?
- In security theory, what use does the child
make of its parents?
- What is "naturalistic observation", and how
did James Robertson's data impress Mary Ainsworth?
- In Bowlby's WHO report, why was his
terminology Freudian but his ideas heretical?
- According to the report, what are the roles of
mothers, mother-substitutes, and fathers in children's
lives?
- What is "ethology", and why was Bowlby's
research team at first reluctant to use it?
- In discussing the "nature of the child's tie
to his mother", how was Bowlby different from and similar to
Freud?
- Why was the observation of behavior, such as
sucking, clinging, and following, ethological?
- Can you get a sense of what "behaviorism"
means from the article? What did psychoanalysts mean by charging
Bowlby with behaviorism?
- How does Bowlby's theory of separation anxiety
set him at odds with both Freud and behaviorists?
- How did his studies of grief and mourning in
infants counter psychoanalytic theory?
- How are separation anxiety in children and
grief in adults related?
- In Uganda, Mary Ainsworth studied "the onset
of proximity-promoting signals and behaviors". What could some of
these signals and behaviors be?
- What relation did she find between maternal
sensitivity and secure attachment?
- How did the various stages of the Strange
Situations procedure test "the balance of attachment and
explorat[ion]"?
- Why was Bowlby's model of motivation and
behavior current with scientific research, while Freud's was
obsolete?
- Why did so many researchers work at trying to
validate Ainsworth's Strange Situation procedure, and how did they
go about doing this?
- Bowlby sees behavior as being motivated by two
distinct forces, stress reduction and exploration. How does this
contrast with Freud, and how do the two forces effect a child's
self-image?
- Freud said that memories or wishes which were
too traumatic to be dealt with in consciousness were repressed.
Does Bowlby's "defensive exclusion from awareness" mean the same
thing as "repression"?
- How can using attachment theory in
psychotherapy explain such things as "transference"?
- How does attachment in childhood effect
relationships among adults, especially marriage?
- What is the weakness of attachment theory when
talking about fathers?
- According to the article, how does method
(e.g. empirical observation) interact with theory (e.g. intuitive
hunches)?
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