The Happiness Blog:

So you want to be happier?

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 30th July, 2010

The essence:

Okay, I got the message.  You may only be here for 7 seconds!  What do I have to say to you?

1. Choose happiness: Up to this moment it may have been true that you had no choice but to be unhappy.  It may also be that you have good reasons to continue to be quite unhappy.  However, it is probably also true that you engage in some unnecessary unhappiness.  Now that I have drawn your attention to these points, you must be aware that you have the option to choose to give up all unnecessary unhappiness.  Here is an example:

* Are you unhappy about your inability to control something that is clearly beyond your control?  If the answer is yes, what is that something?  Okay, now make a commitment to give up trying to control that something which is beyond your control.  Stick to your commitment.

2. Make small changes and/or create rituals: It is not easy to change behaviours.  Remember how difficult it is to make and keep a New Year's resolution.  Don't try to force huge changes in your life by dint of self-discipline.  It probably won't work.  Try these two strategies:

* Identify one thing that, if you changed it, would produce the biggest improvement in your level of happiness.  Now break that down into small easy steps, and make a commitment to begin with the first small step.  Monitor your progress.  Give yourself a little reward every time you complete that little step - day after day after day.  And drop two £1 coins, or a $5 bill, down the nearest drain whenever you fail to make that little step! J

* Create a ritual which will make you happy, such as:

+ Daily meditation for twenty minutes each morning; or:

+ Stop watching TV news, and reading bad news in the newspapers for a month, and instead, start each day by listening to 30 minutes of Mozart music.

3. Forgive others: Holding grudges and being angry with others because of their crummy behaviours is only going to hurt you, and make you unhappy.  Forgive others for their transgressions against you, once you have done whatever is practically within your power to get an apology or reparation.

That's all for this week, except:

4. There is a supplement about David Wallin's book (Attachment in Psychotherapy) on the Supplement to the Happiness Blog page.***

Best wishes,

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne
ABC Coaching and Counselling Services

Jim's email address

Postscript: If you want to be happier, remember: Every night before you go to bed, make a list of three things you are grateful for from that day.  It might be something you got; something you gave; something you saw or heard; or something (bad) that did not happen!  Choose one of those three items and go to bed determined to dream about it. 

And remember to smile!

Postscript: Please take a look at the Institute for CENT.***

Also, the e-book on CENT: Therapy after Ellis, Berne, Freud and the Buddha: The birth of CENT.***

PPS: Please leave a comment below: (‘Comments').

SITE MAP

~~~

The Happiness Blog:

Beyond Fred and Dora

Making sense of David Wallin's (2007) book

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 23rd July, 2010

Introduction

It might seem to readers of this blog that I am opposed to David Wallin's (2007) book - Attachment in Psychotherapy (Guilford Press, hardback).  Actually this is not the case.  I bought the book because of its promise.  I had begun to realize that attachment in childhood is at the very foundation of every ‘individual', and that psychotherapy offers the chance for individuals to develop a new, more secure attachment to a significant other.  Then along came David's book, which makes that case in a very detailed, scholarly way. 

The problem for psychotherapists is ‘how to' integrate attachment theory into their system of helping clients.  The more rigid a system of psychotherapy is, the more difficult it is going to be to adapt.  At its simplest level, attachment theory is quite straightforward.  As expressed by Gullestad (2001)[1]: In a documentary film made by Dr John Bowlby for the World Health Organization, he reports on "...the mental health of homeless children in post-war Europe.  The major conclusion was that to grow up mentally healthy, ‘the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his mother (or permanent mother substitute) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment...'."

If it was this simple, then Gullestad's conclusion would be the end of the story. Looking for ways in which attachment theory could inform psychoanalysis, she concludes: "...the concept of emotional availability comes forward as a creative formulation contributing to the analyst's position in the therapeutic interaction".  Not much need for change there, then.  And humans hate change!

Chapter 5 (continued)...

Last week I looked at the implicit model of the self in David's Chapter 5.  This week, I want to continue to look at Chapter 5, which contains some very interesting and significant ideas.

The conventional view of a self is that it is a ‘separate', ‘individual', ‘discrete entity'.  However, in my CENT models, the individual is modelled as a social being, ‘connected to others' - especially the mother, and then the father, and later significant others.  (See the Institute for CENT).  And that was what I was criticizing about Chapter 5 last week.

However, there is little doubt that David's model has some significant validity.  For example, his emphasis on the ‘somatic self' as the foundation of the person seems intuitively right, and fits into the CENT model.  The emotional self is an extension and refinement of the somatic self - a self that is felt in the viscera and based in the limbic system of the brain.  David cites Fonagy et al (2002), Schore (2003) and others as proposing "...that regulation of emotions is fundamental to the development of the self and that attachment relationships are the primary context within which we learn to regulate our affects - that is, to access, modulate, and use our emotions.  The relational patterns that characterize our first attachments are, fundamentally, patterns of affect regulation that subsequently determine a great deal about the nature of our own unique responsiveness to experience - that is, about the nature of the self.  Correspondingly, in the new attachment relationship that the therapist is attempting to generate, the (client's) emotions are central and their effective regulation - which allows them to be felt, modulated, communicated, and understood - is usually at the very heart of the process that enables the (client) to heal and to grow".  (Page 64).

This is a most important area for consideration by all counsellors and psychotherapists, psychologists and psychoanalysts.  And this time, what I notice to be missing from David's presentation is how ‘good and evil' get into human behaviour.  (See my illustration below, which is from Therapy after Ellis, Berne, Freud and the Buddha: the birth of CENT).

The third element of David's model of the self is the ‘representational self', about which he says: "Bowlby argued that it was an evolutionary necessity to have a representational world that mapped the real one".  That is to say, that we have a map in our heads of the spaces in which we live, and the experiences we have had in those spaces.  "To function effectively, we needed (and still need) knowledge of the world and of ourselves, and this knowledge must be portable.  We derive such knowledge from memories of past experience, and we use this knowledge to make predictions about present and future experience.  Hence, the internal working model.  But the map, as they say, is not the territory". (Page 64). That is a very important point.  All of our stored representations are cumulative and interpretive, as shown in the CENT model.  And as I said last week our internal working models are not images or templates for individuals we have known, but rather what Douglas Hofstadter (2007)[2] called ‘strange loops' - and which I have clarified in my CENT writings as ‘strange loops of experience of encountering others' in which our sense of the other and our sense of self get braided together into one, so that at our very foundations are strange loops of experience of being changed by others and changing them, in which it is impossible to separate out an 'individual I'.

The CENT model of mind

I have recently expanded one of my CENT papers into two chapters which I am packaging as an e-pamphlet.  It is called: The social and emotional nature of the human individual.  If you would like to get a copy, please go to The social and emotional individual - A CENT pamphlet.***

The CENT model seems to somewhat overlap the position being developed by Fonagy and Wallin, but it is also significantly different.  One difference seems to be that in CENT, we see the new baby arriving with both good and bad tendencies, in potential.  Thus the baby's innate urge to attach is not its only urge.  Bowlby's biggest area of weakness was his neglect of the inner world of the child, and how to understand "...how the child builds up his own internal world...".  Holmes, 1995[3], cited in Gullestad, 2001).

Attachment theory seems to be closely related to object relations theory, both of which seem to agree that "the child's need for human contact is a human one".  (Gullestad, page 6).

Gullestad also draws attention to a controversial question, as to whether the drive towards relationship in the object relations and attachment theory approaches replaces or merely supplements the original theory of drives presented by Freud.  In CENT we take the view that drive theory is one side of the coin, and attachment the other.  This is how we model that conceptualization:

Figure 1: Attachment style complements the innate urges theory

For us in CENT, attachment is not just about security and comfort, but also about desire and a will to power.  And as shown in the e-book, both the mother and the child have a good and bad side to their nature:

Figure 8 - The good and bad wolf are inherent in human nature, and in human culture, and the proportions are variable in each individual over time, and from situation to situation

The CENT model seems quite different from the Fonagy/Wallin approach.

Conclusion

Next week I will continue to review Chapter 5, especially on the brain structures involved in affect regulation, which seems to be a very interesting presentation by David Wallin.

That's all for now.

Best wishes,

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne
ABC Coaching and Counselling Services

Jim's email address

Postscript: If you want to be happier, remember: Every night before you go to bed, make a list of three things you are grateful for from that day.  It might be something you got; something you gave; something you saw or heard; or something (bad) that did not happen!  Choose one of those three items and go to bed determined to dream about it. 

And remember to smile!

Postscript: Please take a look at the Institute for CENT.***

Also, the e-book on CENT: Therapy after Ellis, Berne, Freud and the Buddha: The birth of CENT.***

PPS: Please leave a comment below: (‘Comments').
PPPS: I have new retired from most of my front-line professional activities to write a series of three books on the theory and practice of Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT).

[1] Gullestad, S.E. (2001) Attachment theory and psychoanalysis: controversial issues.  Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 24, 3-16

[2] Hofstadter, D. (2007) I am a Strange Loop.  New York: Basic Books.

[3] Holmes, J. (1995) ‘Something there is that doesn't love a wall'.  John Bowlby, attachment theory, and psychoanalysis.  In: Goldberg, S. et al (eds) Attachment Theory, Social Development and Clinical Perspectives (pp19-43).  London: The Analytic Press.

The Happiness Blog:

An Unhappy Man Seeks Help - Part 14:

Wallin, Main, Fonagy and Byrne on Attachment in Psychotherapy

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 16th July, 2010

Introduction

Over the past 14 weeks, since Fred contacted me to say he was feeling very depressed and distressed by the fact that he was living in a marriage in which his wife (Dora) nagged him from morning till night, I have been presenting ideas about how Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy could be used to help him (and Dora) with their problem.  One or two of those ideas related to Attachment Theory.

Then, a few weeks ago, while I was in Scarborough on holiday I found a copy of David Wallin's book on Attachment in Psychotherapy.  I was already thinking about attachment issues, but David's book helped me to see that it is important that psychotherapy in general is grounded in Attachment Theory, and does not merely bolt it on as an afterthought. 

Chapter 5 of David Wallin's book

Over the past week I have been reading Chapter 5 of David's book.  This chapter deals with the multiple dimensions of the self, and it contains some very good summations of, and insights into, recent neuroscientific brain research findings.  I strongly recommend this chapter to you.  But what I want to focus in on today is the implicit model of the self presented by David - his model is of three ‘domains of experience': the body, emotions and the representational world:

Figure 1: My rendition of David Wallin's view of the domains of self-experience

In some ways this seems like a very good model.  We can infer that the body is the foundation, which arrives at parturition, or child birth.  We can also conclude that the emotions are already wired in, but will become shaped by later experiences.  And the representational world is the set of images and sensations, and later words that the new individual will internalize to represent its experiences of encountering the external world.

However, I am a very active modeller of the human drama; and a little alarm bell is going off in my head!  My problem with this model is that it makes the same mistake that Freud and Ellis made: it begins from the individual, and overlooks (Freud) or downplays (Ellis) the environment.  This is misleading, because there are some special features of the physical and psychological birth of the neonate (or newborn baby) that makes it highly desirable to begin at the beginning.

Here is my core model from my papers and my e-book on Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy:

Figure 2: The most basic model of CENT - The dialectical nature of the individual/social ego.  The ego is a product of relationship, and cannot exist without (external and/or internalized) relationship

The overlapping ego space is primarily emotional, from the baby's side, and primarily cultural (cognitive-emotional) from the mother's side.  But this dyad is highly interactional.

The (normal, ‘good enough') mother has no real choice but to ‘colonize' the new born baby, as it is totally helpless; and she is wired up by nature (and her culture) to bond to her children.  She must ‘march in', take over, and run the baby's life for ‘it' - sensitively or insensitively, for better or worse - otherwise (unless it is colonized by a mother substitute) it will surely die.  The neonate, or baby, is also wired up by evolutionary forces to ‘seek' an attachment to what must seem (physically, emotionally) to be ‘another part' of itself: thus creating a ‘natural symbiosis' which satisfies some innate needs of the baby, and some innate and socially shaped needs of the new mother. (The urge to seek a breast and suckle seems to be innate to all mammals.  Taylor, 1999[1]; Gerhardt, 2004[2]; Lewis, Amini and Lannon, 2001[3]).

The image of the overlapping, or interpenetrating mother-baby image, in Figure 2, is a graphical representation of the statement made by Gomez (1997: 53): "The core of the self is the confluence[4]with another, underscoring our inescapably social nature".  This is also a representation of what is called ‘symbiosis' between mother and baby (by Mahler et al).  In practice, the baby begins in a symbiotic state, in which it feels like it is everything.  Only later, after four or five months, does it realize that the mother is a ‘separate individual'.  Then begins a new phase of intersubjectivity.  David Wallin (2007) makes the assumption that intersubjectivity begins at the physical birth, while I agree with Mahler et al (1975/1987)[5] that it begins at the psychological birth, at age four or five months.  During the first four or five months of life, the mother does regulate the emotional state of the baby, but the baby has no awareness of the mother's separateness.  Thus the attachment urge or drive cannot kick in until after the psychological birth of the baby.

Over time, the mother and baby interact, in what initially may seem like a very one-sided relationship, but increasingly, over weeks and months, a mutual (largely symbolic from the baby's side [e.g. turning towards the mothers voice, smiling]) giving and taking develops.  Actually, within a few hours of its birth, the new baby can imitate its mother's/carer's facial expressions; and it has a preference for its mother's voice.  The baby operates from its emotional centres (or limbic system), while the mother responds emotionally and non-verbally (culturally) to the baby, and in the process she helps to regulate the baby's affective states.  (Lewis et al, 2001).

Finale

If you'd like to read some more about my modelling of the human dynamics between mother and baby, at the foundations of the ‘social individual', then you could read one of my Papers on CENT;*** or my e-book on the Birth of CENT.***

But how does any of this help Fred and Dora?  In the first place, Fred and Dora need to know just how much their mothers (and fathers) are braided into the very foundations of their existence.  And...

Two things happened recently that should bring this series of blogs to an end:

1. Sue Gerhardt, in her book, Why Love Matters, argues that, because attachment is about caring, sensitive contact, that is why self-help books so often do not help.  Ouch!  (But keep listening!)

2. I worked with a man in New York this week, by email.  He has a distant, avoidant attachment style of relating, which is grounded in his relationship with his cold, depressed mother.  And he wanted to work with me to resolve this problem.  As I began to read his email, I felt a strong need to communicate warmth and acceptance, which I would normally - automatically- communicate with my face and non-verbal body movements.  However, on this occasion, I was restricted to putting a little smiley face () after key statements.  As I proceeded, I realized that this is related to Sue's point about remoteness. So I spoke to that client, and suggested that it was probably his avoidant relationship style that drove him to seek a (remote) counsellor; and that I strongly believed that he needed to be in the same space as his counsellor; and that his counsellor needed to act as a re-parenting figure, by offering him the sensitivity and warmth that he did not get from his mother; as well as helping him to become more mindful and grounded in his body (as recommended by David Wallin), and learning to reframe his early experiences (as practiced in CENT).  The client agreed, and is looking for a suitable counselor (US spelling) in New York City.

So, dear Fred and Dora, I want you to seriously consider getting a flesh and blood counsellor/psychotherapist in the area where you live; to make sure that person utilizes Attachment Theory in dealing with relationship conflict problems; and to spend a reasonable amount of time un-learning your ways of relating, that you learned from your insecurely attached parent(s); and to learn to be intimate by having that modelled for you by your professional helper.

Postscript 1

I'm going to miss Fred and Dora, but they need to be elsewhere!

Postscript 2

More on David Wallin's book next week.

Warm best wishes.

[1] Taylor, D. (ed) (1999) Talking Cure: Mind and method of the Tavistock Clinic.  London: Duckworth. 

[2] Gerhardt, S. (2004) Why Love Matters: How affection shapes a baby's brain.  London: Routledge.

[3]Lewis, T., Amini, F. and Lannon, R. (2001) A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage Books

[4]‘Confluence' means "the junction of two rivers", according to Soanes, C. (2002) Paperback Oxford English Dictionary.  New York: Oxford University Press.  And two rivers intermingle when they meet, as do two humans who cohabit for long periods of time.

[5] Mahler, M.S., Pine, F. and Bergman, A. (1975/1987) The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and individuation.  London: Maresfield Library.

The Happiness Blog:

An Unhappy Man Seeks Help - Part 13:

At last, what did Peter Fonagy say?

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 9th July, 2010

Prelude

Hi,

I have tended, over the past few weeks, to write very long blogs:  because I had so much to digest and communicate. However, I am aware that people are busy.  Most people will not read a long blog, no matter how compelling the content might seem to be.  So today I am going to aim for a shorter (but probably not ‘short') blog.

I mainly want to offer practical help with the process of promoting happiness - by which I mean calm serenity, and not excited happiness.  Excited happiness depends upon external factors, such as winning the lottery.  Calm serenity can be cultivated, regardless of what is going on externally in your life.  For example, explore the happiness inducing impact of regular, daily meditation; and/or physical exercise!

However, as a counsellor/therapist, I have to explore ideas at a more theoretical level as well.  And some of that will inevitably end up in this blog.

Introduction

I think Attachment Theory is a very powerful explanation for problems in all kinds of childhood and adult relationships.  If you are not securely attached to your mother/carer then you are unlikely to be securely attached to your friends/peers, or you husband/wife.

According to Bowlby's 1988 book of lectures, republished in 2005[1], "...attachment theory (is) widely regarded as probably the best supported theory of socio-emotional development yet available (Rajecki, Lamb, and Obmascher, 1978; Rutter, 1980; Parkes and Stevenson-Hind, 1982; Sroufe, 1986)".  (Page 31).

I therefore think it is hugely important that psychotherapists of all stripes should learn to apply Attachment Theory insights to their therapeutic work, as one (fundamental) dimension of their understanding of the client's emotional wiring.  And I think if our troubled couple, Fred and Dora, want to get counselling help, they should seek out a counsellor who includes work on attachment in their approach to helping their clients.

~~~

David Wallin on attachment and psychotherapy

Our childhood attachment to our primary carers (mum, and dad) is hugely important to our lifelong ability to engage in relationships.  That is why I bought David Wallin's (2007) book on attachment and psychotherapy[2].  The top blurb on the back of the dust jacket was this: ‘Simply the best integration of key advances in attachment theory and research and their applications to psychotherapy'.  But this was a quote from Peter Fonagy; and Peter Fonagy's theory is one of the main foundations of (the early part) of Wallin's book!  So, proceed carefully!

When I had read Chapters 3 and 4 of Wallin's book, I concluded that Mary Main and Peter Fonagy are cognitive extremists, in that they ascribe a dramatic degree of conscious thinking and information processing capability to young children and adults.  In Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT), we promote the perception that human beings are largely non-conscious processors of information.  We probably do about 95% of our daily routines automatically.[3]  And most people do not think very effectively, especially about human relationships. 

Peter Fonagy's perspective

I bought two of Fonagy's books to check out my hypothesis that he is a cognitive extremist.  Both have now arrived. I have read the introduction of the first, and dipped into the summary of the second.  What I have learned is that he does not intend to be a cognitive extremist.  He considers that he is integrating cognition and emotion in a fusion of attachment theory and psychoanalytic psychotherapy[4].

Fonagy attributes to quite ordinary individuals, from a very early age, the ability to ‘mentalize'.  This he defines by reference to four criteria:

1. "Awareness of the nature of mental states - for example, that our understanding of ourselves and others is invariably incomplete; that people may modify mental states to minimize pain; that people may deliberately disguise internal states; that certain psychological responses are predictable given certain circumstances".

How many people do you know who think like this? How many people do you know who behave as if they were (non-consciously) thinking like this? 

2. "Explicit effort to identify mental states underlying behaviour - for example, plausibly accounting for behaviour in terms of beliefs, feelings, desires; understanding that our interpretations of others may be influenced by our own mental states; realizing that feelings about a situation may be inconsistent with observable aspects of the situation".

How many people do you know who think like this? How many people do you know who behave as if they were (non-consciously) thinking like this? 

3. Recognition of the ‘developmental' aspects of mental states - for example, that what was felt yesterday may be different from what is felt today or tomorrow; that parents' behaviour is both shaped by their own parent's behaviour and shapes the behaviour of their children; that childhood perspectives often need to be revised in light of adult understanding".

How many people do you know who think like this? How many people do you know who behave as if they were (non-consciously) thinking like this? 

4. "Awareness of mental states in relation to the interviewer (or therapist) - for example, that without being told, the therapist cannot know what the patient knows; that the therapist may have her own distinctive emotional responses to the patient's story; that the therapist's history, and consequently, her mental states may well be different from those of the patient (adapted with permission from Fonagy, Target, Steele, and Steele, 1998)".

How many people do you know who think like this? How many people do you know who behave as if they were (non-consciously) thinking like this? 

What is awareness?

Items 1 and 4 above refer to "awareness".  This concept is not listed in my dictionary of psychology[5].  It is also not listed in the index of my handbook of cognitive psychology[6].  So what is ‘awareness'?  My English dictionary defines the word ‘aware' as meaning: "Having knowledge of a situation or fact"; so awareness is a state of having knowledge of a situation or fact.  Normally, when we speak of somebody having knowledge, we mean ‘conscious knowledge' and ‘conscious awareness'; although we also have the concept of ‘tacit knowledge' (which is non-conscious).  For some time, I was uncertain whether Fonagy and Wallin meant ‘mentalizing' to be based upon conscious awareness.

However, Wallin goes on to make this statement: "Fonagy makes the point that what we need to listen for (in therapy clients and/or in children's statements - JB) are not enunciations of principles concerning mental states ([e.g.] "One can never know what someone else feels") but rather evidence that such principles are implicitly understood ([e.g.] "As a child, I was sure that my mother didn't care for me, but given what I've heard from my father about how she felt that I rejected her, now I'm not really sure what she felt").  (Wallin, 2007, page 45).

Thus, when Fonagy (and Wallin) refer to mentalization, we need to get that they are talking about non-conscious processing of information.  That's it - nothing remarkable - just straightforward non-conscious processing of information, which we do all the time (or about 95% of the time).  Actually we do it all the time, because even our conscious thinking processes are underpinned by a whole load of nonconscious processing.  Of course, questions can be asked about the precise level of ability of an individual to ‘mentalize' (or process information non-consciously) and that will depend upon their cognitive-emotive education/learning experiences.  Nothing remarkable here.

Can we test Fonagy's claims?

Elsewhere, Wallin refers to the fact that Fonagy and his associates also use the concept ‘mentalizing proper' to mean ‘conscious processing of information'.

So, Fonagy is arguing that individuals who have high levels of mentalizing ability, or ability to non-consciously process information, have the four abilities listed in points 1-4 above.

Let me put that to the readers of this blog:

(a) To what extent do you have awareness of mental states in yourself and others?

Oh no!  Now we are stumped.  Why? Because I am forced into asking you this question instead:

(a) To what extent are you conscious of having unconscious awareness of mental states in yourself and others?

You are not going to be able to answer that question, and we are still on point 1 from above. The reason you cannot answer this question is this: You cannot consciously know what you non-consciously know.  (This language is very clumsy, because nobody has worked on developing refinements of these concepts in light of the fact that humans are largely non-conscious, and as emotive as they are cognitive.  We are still in the prehistory of psychology!)

Item 2 is even more confusing, because it states, in effect, that individuals who have high mentalizing capacity (or a high level of competence in non-consciously processing information) have an implicit ability to engage in "Explicit effort to identify mental states underlying behaviour...".  Is that even possible?  Can a child have an explicit ability to engage in implicit efforts?  We might get clearer about the meaning of this question if we translate it into its dictionary definitions, and to define ‘child' as a five year old, since Fonagy maintains that mentalizing ability matures about the age of four years.  This then is our new version of our question: Is it possible for a five year old child to have an inferable ability to engage in "Clear and distinct efforts to identify mental states underlying (the) behaviour (of its mother, for example)?"

How would we know the answer?  We can only infer what is going on inside a child's brain-mind, normally from its behaviour, including nonverbal communication.  What evidence would we have to be observing to be able to make the statement: "This child (Charlie, for example) is clearly demonstrating an ability to engage in implicit efforts to identify the mental states underlying his mother's behaviour, as she passes that object to him".

I think I will ask David Wallin and Peter Fonagy to answer that question! J

My concerns

So far I have suspected Main, Fonagy and Wallin of cognitive extremism - of exaggerating the degree to which individuals can think consciously.  I also think they may be exaggerating the degree to which individuals can think non-consciously.  And thirdly, I think they are making claims which do not seem to be provable by observable means.

How come David Wallin took Peter Fonagy's four points, above, on trust.  Why did he not subject them to critical analysis?

I'll leave it there for this week.  If you want to explore an alternative conceptual framework from Main/Fonagy/Wallin, which deals with the deployment of attachment theory and object relations in counselling and therapy contexts, then please take a look at my e-book: Therapy after Ellis, Berne, Freud and the Buddha: the Birth of Cognitive -Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT). ***

Best wishes,

Postscript: If you want to be happier, remember: Every night before you go to bed, make a list of three things you are grateful for from that day.  It might be something you got; something you gave; something you saw or heard; or something (bad) that did not happen!  Choose one of those three items and go to bed determined to dream about it. 

And remember to smile!

PPS: Please leave a comment below: (‘Comments').

[1] Bowlby,  J. (2005) A Secure Base: clinical applications of attachment theory.  London: Routledge Classics.

[2] Wallin, D. (2007) Attachment in Psychotherapy.  New York: The Guildford Press.

[3] Bargh, J.A. and Chartrand, T.L. (1999) The unbearable automaticity of being.  American Psychologist, 54(7): 462-479. And:

Gladwell, M. (2006) BLINK: The power of thinking without thinking.  London: Penguin Books.

[4] Fonagy, P. (2002) Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self.  New York: Other Press.  And:

Fonagy, P. (2001) Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis.  New York: Other Press.

[5] Colman, A.M. (2002) A Dictionary of Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[6] Eysenck, M.W. and Keane, M.T. (2000) Cognitive Psychology: A student's Handbook. Fourth edition.  East Sussex: Psychology Press.

The Happiness Blog:

An Unhappy Man Seeks Help - Part 12:

How to resolve problems of insecure attachment...

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 1^st July, 2010

Prelude

Human beings live in a world of languaging; and whoever controls the concepts and themes of that languaging also happen to control the minds of those who don't control the concepts and themes.

Knowledge is power!  Don't take your ideas over wholesale from anybody.  If you want to be happy and free, you need to learn to think for yourself.  Thinking does not come easily to humans.  We are fundamentally emotional beings; creatures of habit; and we learn ‘what' to think long before we have any chance to learn ‘how' to think.

So if you want to be happy and free, prioritize learning how to think, and practice high level conscious thinking about your major life considerations.  And attend to your emotions, and take care of your feelings.  Or, alternatively, go to sleep and let life take you where it will. One or the other.  Above all, do not wobble between those options!

Don't read bent journalism.  Don't listen to pap on TV.  Study some systems of critical thinking skill, and/or creative thinking skill; and study philosophy and psychology.  But study all of this critically, because there are alligators in the swamp!

Introduction

As soon as I finished last week's blog update, I went online and looked up ‘Peter Fonagy'.  I already had one article by him, and I wanted to get some more information.  I found the details of a book of his advertised online - Affect Regulation, Mentalization and the Development of the Self - and so I went to Amazon to order it.  There I found an earlier book of his - Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis - and so I also ordered that one.  (Academic curiosity and enquiry can be very expensive!)

It's a pain in the butt doing serious academic research - but the alternative is to do sloppy, subjective research.  I seem to have a gene for thoroughness.  I want to get to the bottom of this question:  Since Mary main seems, on the basis of the evidence I reviewed last week, to be a ‘cognitive extremist', and David Wallin brackets Main and Fonagy together in his book, will I also find that Peter Fonagy is a cognitive extremist?  (Remember, a cognitive extremist is one who exaggerates the degree to which humans operate from conscious thinking, and underestimates the degree to which we operate from tacit, non-conscious emotional habits or patterns of behaviour).  The outcome of that question is not at all fixed, and I might find that I am ‘barking up the wrong tree', and have to get off it and accept the world as presented by Dr David Wallin?  But the jury is still out on that one.

I then set my agenda for today's blog:

"So what exactly is Fonagy's concept of ‘mentalizing'?

"This is what David Wallin has to say about ‘mentalizing'...etc..."

No such thing as a simple lunch

However , when I went out for lunch on Monday, I took David's book (Attachment and Psychotherapy) with me, with the intention of just ‘quickly finishing off the section on Mary Main', so I could get down to dealing with Peter Fonagy.  But it was not to be...

I sat down with my lunch (an unexciting salad ) and reviewed the sections of Part One of David's book that I had studied in depth.  I then identified pages 37 to 42 for a ‘quick review'.

David begins this section by repeating the point about the tendency of attachment patterns to repeat themselves across the generations.  He then reports that "Main's research suggested that secure attachment was the outcome of flexibility in the parents begetting flexibility in their offspring". (Wallin, 2007, page 37).  This introduction of the concept of "flexibility" seems to me to be "legs on a snake", as they say in Zen.  When parents are loving and accepting of their children, the children learn to feel secure and to attach to the parents securely: (James, 2007)[1].  It's not about how flexible or conscious parents are; or how into using ‘elaborated code' the parents happen to be[2]; but it's all about how emotionally kind and sensitive and caring they happen to be.  That's the real essence of what Bowlby discovered, and it's the intuitively obvious logic of security of attachment.  But now the concept of flexibility is imported.  Why?

My take on Attachment Theory

If I had a secure relationship with my mother, then I would tend to behave in ways with my own son (for example) which would promote a secure attachment of him to me.  I would not have to understand consciously how I am helping to regulate his emotional affects, or what he is non-consciously learning about his own emotions from my actions towards him.  It is all going on at non-conscious levels; and I am merely replicating (non-consciously) what I learned (non-consciously) from interacting with my own parents.  Any individual psychologist or psychoanalyst could, in principle, insist upon tracking what they are (or seem to be!) thinking/feeling in their interactions with their children, but 95% of our thinking is probably non-conscious - so they would not get very far with this exercise.  Most parents (including most psychologists and psychoanalysts) would simply operate tacitly, non-consciously, if they trust their basic approach to the task of parenting.  What I am saying is that metacognition (or Peter Fonagy's concept of mentalizing) has nothing to do with my ability to promote secure attachment of my son to me.

To illustrate my claim that 'thinking about thinking' does not necessarily ensure secure attachment between mother and child, let me cite an individual case study:

Oliver James, now a Child Psychologist, was himself the son of a woman who was a successful psychiatric social worker, before she qualified as a psychoanalyst.  One would assume that to make that career progression she must have been good at reflecting on her own mental processes, and the mental processes of her clients (and her loved ones).  However, she went on to produce several insecure children, including Oliver, who described his childhood like this:

"I believe that my early infantile deprivation (the first six months) left me with a rather weak sense of self, meaning that I was unsure of what I really felt...  I also believe that my mother's unresponsiveness and irritability when I was a toddler made me emotionally insecure.  Anyone who was there will tell you I was often surly, aggressive and what is technically known as ‘avoidant'.  Having felt rejected by my mum, I feared rejection in relationships, expecting others to be hostile or neglectful".  (James, 2010)[3].  I cite this example in defence of my view that secure attachment requires sensitive, loving care; and insecure attachment is produced by the lack of sensitive, loving care.  It has nothing to do with metacognition, or mentalizing, or flexibility, per se.  James points out that his observations about his own childhood are supported by significant amounts of research evidence, including: Ogawa et al, (1997)[4].

Legs on a snake

At this point, I am halfway through my salad - not on Monday, but on Tuesday. (Not the same salad, I hasten to add: )

David Wallin then presents Main's conclusion regarding insecure attachment, which asserts that parents who were themselves insecurely attached to their parents "...behaved in ways (with their own children) that were unconsciously calculated to preserve their own states of mind with respect to attachment".  Note: "Preserving their own states of mind" again seems to me to be more "legs on a snake".  (Snakes don't need legs - they get along fine without them; and insecure parents act out the behaviours they saw/felt (experienced) being modelled (or engaged in) by their own parents, quite automatically, without the need to import any "unconscious calculations" regarding attachment.  [Of course, non-conscious processing of stimuli is going on, but we cannot know the details of that processing work]).  Children model themselves on their parents, and, to a significant extent, become insecure in response to parents who had insecure attachment to their own parents; or secure in response to parents who had secure attachment to their parents.  There is no need to import complex cognitive explanations for this simple modelling and copying process.

In Sue Gerhardt's book on attachment[5], the author presents two apparently conflicting pictures of parents shaping their children emotionally:

(1) One - on pages 23-25 - in which she seems to imply that the parent helps the child to label their emotions - which sounds like ‘elaborated code' stuff, which is not likely to be happening outside of certain educated middle class contexts, and thus is not central to the production of secure attachment (since some secure attachment must be granted to happen in working class and peasant cultures); and:

(2) Another - on page 31 - in which she seems to be portraying parents and their children "participating in (each other's) states of mind" by virtue of mirror neurons which allow them to "resonate to each other's feelings" in a non-conscious manner. 

It seems to me that the picture presented in sub-paragraph (2) above is closer to how most humans influence and change each other, most of the time, including how mothers and their babies engage in intersubjective states - non-consciously.  On the other hand, sub-paragraph (1) seems to me to be a fantasy, or, at best, a description of how some educated middle class individuals relate to their children, some of the time.

Statistical complications (for Mary Main!)

On pages 38 and 39 of David Wallin's book, there is a discussion of the complication of the model of attachment by the existence of those children who have a "disorganized" attachment to their parents.  It is not clear to me if this is a discrete category, or a subcategory of the other three (secure, avoidant and ambivalent) categories of attachment.  This then leads on to a discussion of a meta-analysis by van IJzendoorn (1995)[6] who suggested that "...attachment researchers confronted what he aptly referred to as ‘a transmission gap' ... The nature of the caregiver's sensitive responsiveness - long thought to be the bedrock of attachment, secure or insecure - appeared to explain partly, but by no means completely, how and why the working model(s) of the parents tended to become the working model(s) of their children.  Strikingly, it was Mary Main who, in 1991, introduced to the attachment field two vital concepts - metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive monitoring - that would later be enlisted by Peter Fonagy to help close the so-called transmission gap".  (Wallin, page 39).

It is important to note here that, if van IJzendoorn is impugning anything at all by his analysis, he is (implicitly) impugning the validity of Mary Main's ‘Adult Attachment Interview' protocol (AAI), and not Bowlby's attachment theory, or the very obvious, intuitive insight that children become like their parents (except when they become like the opposite of their parents - by rebellion).  To support this latter point, I want to quote Oliver James again: "Your past hugely influences what approach you take, especially the way your own mother cared for you.  About half of mothers do what their mothers did, the other half do something different". (James, 2010 [pages 9 and 332] cites Johnston et al 2008 in defence of this statement)[7].

Where did van IJzendoorn find this "transmission gap" - or lack of ability to explain how attachment styles span the generations?  In some statistical workings out of correlations between AAI results and the behaviour of offspring in the Strange Situation experiments!  Not in the real world?  No: in some statistical calculations.  Does that prove it is real?  Of course not!

Mary Main's work is unravelling

Why did Mary Main introduce the concepts of metacognitive knowledge and monitoring to the debate?  Because she was persuaded by van IJzendoorn's numbers; which were only there because of her previous innovation: the AAI.  So Mary Main is now fixing a problem that may be a mere statistical effect of her own previous theorizing.

Am I impressed by van IJzendoorn's figures?  No.  I am a sceptic on a par with Churchill, who famously said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies; damned lies; and statistics".  Statistics cannot prove anything.  Statistics are hypothetical or propositional statements, which might seem to support a particular theory, or to oppose another.  But they should not be given the status of ‘concrete realities'.

For me, modelling and copying are a perfectly adequate explanations as to why attachment styles pass down the generations.  But because of van IJzendoorn's (1995) statistical analysis, we now have Mary Main importing the concepts of metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive monitoring to the attachment debate.

Emotions first - Cognitions second

Why is this important?  Because Fred and Dora - our ongoing troubled couple - probably learned their relationship styles from their parents.  They are probably acting out patterns of relating they first encountered in their parental homes long before they had any words to describe human behaviour.  Mary Main - and later (I am guessing) Peter Fonagy - may want to push Fred and Dora into learning some elaborated code of linguistic labelling and verbal description.  However, what I want Fred and Dora to do is to complete their (emotional) experiences from their childhood, so they can heal.  That is why this whole investigation is happening here.  To complete your emotional experience means to feel something; something which has been frozen for decades in the basement of your mind.  I suspect Mary and Peter would want Fred and Dora to extend their vocabularies and sharpen up their elaborated codes.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with extending vocabularies, or developing elaborated codes of communication.  And indeed, I would also do some cognitive work with Fred and Dora, but not at the expense of their emotional labours.  First they must complete their relationships with their parents, and then they can cognitively reframe the negative experiences that lie at the root of their insecure attachments (if indeed they can get hold of those experiences).

Single and multiple Working Models

Freud had identified the phenomenon of the ‘repetition compulsion', the carrying on of destructive or self harming behaviours, despite their obvious detriment to the actor.  Bowlby did not use the ‘repetition compulsion' concept, but instead created the concept of an ‘internal working model' - suggesting that children formed an internalized model of how their mother/carer related to them, and used that as their model for relationship in general.  At a certain point Bowlby recognized that an individual could have more than one internal working model.  According to Wallin (2007), Main built on that statement to suggest that:

(a) Secure children had a single, integrated working model of relationship; but:

(b) That insecure children have multiple "incompatible or conflicting" models.

I'm far from being convinced that that is how it works.  There is no good reason why a secure individual might not have several internal working models, each different, but each based on the secure expectation of meeting with sensitive caring from mum, dad, granny, Mrs Smith the playgroup leader, and so on.  And there is certainly no good reason why a physically abused child could not have got all of his insecurity of attachment from his vicious, child-beating parents, and have only one (vicious) working model internalized in his mind.

Mary Mains ideas are in a jumble!

So Mary Main is far from convincing me.

Wallin (2007: page 40) then goes on to say that, "According to Main, the consideration of multiple models led her directly to metacognition (Main, 1991)". How?  What is the connection here?  Is there an obvious or logical link between the idea of internalized working models - which are probably, normally, non-conscious, and probably always and only non-conscious - and thinking about thinking?  I fail to see one. 

This is highly unsatisfactory.  Mary Main invented the Adult Attachment Interview, in which she questions parents about their early childhood experience.  She then relates that to experiments - called the Strange Situation - in which children are with their mothers, a stranger enters, the mother leaves (for 3 minutes), the child is monitored, the mother returns, the child's response to the mother's return is noted.  Main, and her colleagues, makes (statistical) claims based on this work regarding intergeneration transmission of attachment patterns.  (How does the mother's security of attachment, as ‘measured' [or implied] by the AAI, relate to the child's security of attachment, as measured [or implied] by the child's behaviour in the Strange Situation). Some years later van IJzendoorn comes along, runs a meta-analysis on the statistical analyses of Main and her colleagues, and finds a ‘transmission gap'.  Main then tries to fill the gap.  She looks around and finds ‘multiple internal models', and from here, jumps to ‘metacognition' as the solution to insecure attachment.  Why?  How does that work?  And why must we all get in line behind Main, Fonagy and Wallin, and get metacognition into our therapy work?

An alternative model

Sorry.  Humans are primarily emotional beings.  They have a language-based superstructure imposed upon them at the point of birth onwards.  The human ego emerges out of the dialectical interaction of a colonizing mother and a feeling baby.  The kind of relational style that is developed by that new ego is a result of that dialectical interaction.  Everything about the mother is relevant - her thoughts, feelings and actions.  Everything about the baby is relevant - its perceptions, feelings and thoughts.  But what gets distorted in the first couple of years is the non-conscious, emotional level of processing in the baby.  And it is to that level that corrective, therapeutic endeavours must primarily turn.  That does not mean ignoring the cognitive or thinking and languaging levels.  It means not ignoring the fact that humans are primarily non-conscious emotional beings.

If you want to read some more about my model of mother-baby dialectics, and the way the human ego emerges, then you can either get a copy of my paper:

#  Byrne, J. (2009i) The "Individual" and his/her Social Relationships - The CENT Perspective.  CENT Paper No.9.  Hebden Bridge: The Institute for CENT. ***

Or you could read the relevant sections of my e-book:

# Therapy after Ellis, Berne, Freud and the Buddha: the birth of Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT) ***

~~~

Next week

I would like to say that next week I will finally get down to writing about Peter Fonagy, but I cannot be sure now.  I have read David Wallin's Chapter 4 - Fonagy and Forward - and also an article by Fonagy: Attachment, the development of the self, and its pathology in personality disorders[8].  But I have also identified two additional papers by Fonagy, and two books, which I have ordered from Amazon.  I will think about whether it is worth making an interim statement, before having read all that material.  One statement I can make is this: I like some of the ideas I have read about from Peter Fonagy.  But I am still committed to comprehensive chewing of my data inputs.

~~~

About Fred and Dora

If Fred and Dora could get to have the experience of being mirrored by a loving therapist, who cared for them, and who reflected them as being okay, they could learn to overcome their attachment problems, without the need for any particular theory of ‘thinking about thinking'.  That is not to say they could not benefit from improvements in their thinking.  We all could benefit from that, all of the time.  (In his book on Practical Thinking, back in the 1970s, Dr Edward de Bono established through practical thought experiments that university professors are not any better at practical thinking challenges than are plumbers!)

~~~

Be Happy

If you want to be happy, try to focus on the advantages and blessings in your life.

If you want to shrink your unhappiness, remind yourself of what Window No.1 says: "Life is suffering for dolls like us", which means life is difficult, frustrating and painful for all humans, much of the time.  When you put your problems in that context - or look at them through that window - don't they shrink? 

And remember, life is a ‘difficult posting', but you will eventually be ‘relieved'.  Your turn to push up the daisies will eventually arrive.  Do you want to hasten it along as a way to escape from the challenges in your life?  No?  Then accept the things you cannot change, and change the things you can.

And remember to smile!

Best wishes,

[1] James, O. (2007) They F*** You Up: How to survive family life.  London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

[2] Back in the 1970s, Basil Bernstein introduced the concepts of ‘elaborated code' and ‘restricted code', to describe the differences in language use by the working class (restricted code) and the middle and upper classes (elaborated code).  Mary Main and Peter Fonagy are not just in danger of implying that only middle and upper class people can produce secure children, as they have the right kind of cognitive and linguistic abilities; but also that only psychologists, with their understanding of the mind of the child and the mother, could possibly raise secure children.  I know this is not their intention, but it seems to be virtually implicit in what they are saying..

[3] James, O. (2010) How Not to F*** Them Up: The first three years.  London: Vermillion.

[4] Ogawa, J. et al (1997) Development and the fragmented self: longitudinal study of dissociative symptomatology in a nonclinical sample'.  Development and Psychopathology, 9,  855-879.

[5] Gerhardt, S. (2004) Why Love Matters: how affection shapes a baby's brain.  London: Routledge.

[6] Van IJzendoorn, M.H. (1995) Adult attachment representations, parental responsiveness, and infant attachment: A meta-analysis on the predictive validity of the Adult Attachment Interview.  Psychological Bulletin, 117, 387-403.

[7] Johnston, D.D. et al (2008) Mother's work history in the construction of adult daughter's worker-mother discursive strategies'.  Sociological Focus, 41: 159-176.

[8] Fonagy, P. (2010) Attachment, the development of the self, and its pathology in personality disorders.  Psychomedia: Telematic Review - Problems of Psychotherapy.  Available online: http://www.psychomedia.it/pm/modther/probpsiter/fonagy-2.htm.  Accessed: 23^rd June 2010.