You are what you ate

Nice, skeletal sum of attachment theory, childhood into adulthood, invoking (at the end) the linguistic implications of adult attachment (i.e., the stuff I look for when coding Adult Attachment Interview transcripts, and when I listen to patients talk about their parents/early experiences/contemporary intimate relationships). Maybe a little jargony for the layperson, but sparsely so.

The child seeks the caregiver's security and protection for many reasons, but particularly in moments when he or she is frightened or in danger. Thus, careseeking often takes place in moments of high affective arousal, arousal that is then--optimally--regulated by the caregiver And by virtue of her role as regulator and container of that affect, the mother's response to the infant's affect becomes a part of that affective experience.

Children quickly figure out how to seek care in a way that will minimally disrupt their vital relationship to their caregiver. One of the things they must learn in this process is which affects are tolerable to caregivers, and which are not. They learn this via the repetition [...] of a particular relational drama around the expression of careseeking. Over time, their efforts to regulate their affects in such a way as to maintain their primary relationships become organized into what attachment theorists refer to as attachment patterns [....], characteristic ways of seeking care from and preserving closeness with the caregiver. And it is these ways of protecting the other and ultimately the self from affects that disrupt careseeking and caregiving that become internal representations of attachment or -- in analytic terms -- central aspects of psychic structure.

Because the survival of infants is dependent upon success in their careseeking efforts, these are psychologically and physically critical events. Without proximal care and containment, infants cannot function [...]. Thus, they must shape themselves (and their experience of affect and arousal) to ensure that their needs are met. They must obtain care, at whatever cost to their functioning. Aspects of self-experience, and especially affective experience, that preclude the maintenance of attachment relationships are disavowed reversed, fragmented, or dissociated. Knowing, thinking, and feeling emerge within the context of maintaining vital connections, [snip]. Children quickly learn what kinds of thoughts and emotions can be borne within the context of their primary attachments. It is within his or her earliest relationships that a child's core sense of self in relation to arousal, to affect, and to careseeking is laid down [...].

In adults, these same patterns are reflected in the way an adult regulates affect within the structure of narrative. Early moments of regulation live on in the structure of speech, of thought, and of affects. When we listen carefully to the contradictions, dysfluencies, and disruptions in narrative, we are witnessing the representation in language and thought of early dyadic experinces of disrupted careseeking and dysregulation.

From Slade, A. (2007). Disorganized Mother, Disorganized Child. In D. Oppenheim & D.F. Goldsmith (eds.) Attachment theory in clinical work with children: Bridging the gap between research and practice (pp. 226-250). New York: Guilford Press.