Q – Do Mothers (Therapists) Really Attach to Their Babies (Clients)?

Q – Do mothers (therapists) really attach to their babies (clients)?

A – George Lakoff—cognitive scientist turned political frame guru—tells an interesting anecdote.  Apparently a liberal journalist was interviewing then Vice President Dick Cheney. After the journalist posed his question to the VP, Cheney thought for a moment and simply stated: “I don’t accept the frame of your question; therefore I cannot answer it.” Lakoff tells this story to illustrate an important point drawn from the world of cognitive science: it does not matter what position you take on an issue; what matters is the frame you take. In addition, once you accept a frame, it does not matter if you argue in favor of or against the issue in question because in both cases the frame is energized and given value as far as a cognitive filter or lens is concerned. In the above example, Cheney (who, by all accounts, is an astute student of political frames) knew that by offering any answer to the question posed to him—pro or con—he would lose the debate because he would be energizing and giving value to the liberal cognitive filter that the journalist was using. In essence, Cheney did not accept the journalist’s liberal frame and, in doing so, did not energize it or give it cognitive valence or value. Unfortunately, Lakoff tells stories of this nature to point out that liberals regularly accept conservative frames, and, as a result, shoot themselves in the foot by losing the battle of cognitive frames. Lakoff tells us, “People think using frames, not facts.” Here’s an example (pulling from Lakoff’s work here). If you argue against the “death tax” or “tax relief,” you have just energized and given cognitive value to the conservative frame. Lakoff tells liberals that they should only argue for “the inheritance tax” or “membership fees for a free society,” and, by doing so, energize and give cognitive value to the liberal frame. (Click on this link to read an article by Lakoff over at Truthout.org on these themes.)

All this to say that when you ask a question like, “Do mothers (therapists) really attach to their babies (clients)?” you are implying a particular frame. I guess I could “pull a Cheney” and simply state that I don’t accept your frame, but that would make for a short and uninformative blog post. What might be of some help is to point out the frame being used here. Simply, the frame being used here is known as the reductionistic frame, that is to say, reducing all phenomena to simple cause and effect chains (recall all of those billiard ball examples from your high school physics class—that’s cause and effect). Here’s how the Wikipedia entry for reductionism defines this frame:

Reductionism can either mean (a) an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or (b) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.

So, by asking “Do mothers (therapists) really attach to their babies (clients)?” you have just reduced a very complex system of interactions to cause and effect, that is to say, attach or not attach. So, now I will pull a Cheney and simply say that within a reductionistic frame, yes, mothers do attach to their babies, and therapists do attach to their clients. “OK, but there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere … what is it?” you ask. There is a but in there, and here it is. “But” … in the frame that Bowlby used (more on this in a moment), the answer is probably no—mothers do not attach to their babies and therapists do not attach to their clients. “What! mothers don’t attach to their babies … this isn’t what Bowlby said,” you exclaim. Actually, it is; it’s the reductionistic framers who came later who reframed Bowlby’s main message and fundamentally changed its meaning. To create an analogy, Bowlby was in favor of “membership fees for a free society” whereas many of Bowlby’s followers used a frame of “tax relief.” Let me see if I can explain.

John Bowlby—arguably the father of attachment theory—although very much aware of the reductionistic frame that surrounded him back in the 1950s and 60s (which is the frame that most of Western science still uses today), chose to use a different frame to frame his theory of attachment. What frame did he use? Bowlby framed the lion’s share of his theory using a naturalistic form (as opposed to a mechanistic form—cybernetics—which I will not be talking about) of systems theory. The naturalistic form of systems theory (with its close ties to biology—Bowlby was an M.D. after all) that Bowlby used is associated with systems thinker Ludwig von Bertalanffy. Bert (as I call him for short) developed what is known as General System Theory or GST, starting as early as the late 1920s. For a good summary of GST, see Bert’s 1969 book General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. I wrote a summary of GST. (Use the CONTACT US link above to request a copy.) I’d be remiss if I did not mention that Bowlby and Bert met through the auspices of the final meeting of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Study Group on the Psychological Development of the Child, which took place in Geneva in 1956. I’d be equally remiss if I did not mention that our Foundation commissioned an article to look at how Bowlby used a naturalistic (or organismic to use Bert’s term) systems frame to frame his theory of attachment. The article is by Dr. Gary Metcalf—former president of the International Society for the Systems Science (ISSS)—and entitled John Bowlby: Rediscovering a Systems Scientist (which can be downloaded from the ISSS web site free of charge).

So, all this to say that I cannot even begin to answer your question without first considering cognitive frames. Depending on the frame used, the answer will change. And as Lakoff points out in his 1996 book Moral Politics—How Liberals and Conservatives Think, there is no right or wrong cognitive model, but depending on the model used the entailments will change. In one model, mothers and babies attach; in another, they don’t. Again, within a reductionistic frame, mothers do attach to their babies and therapists do attach to their clients. But within a naturalistic systems frame, the question doesn’t make any sense because within this frame there is no unitary dimension of “attach or don’t attach.”

OK … pop quiz: What frame is used to frame the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) diagnosis know as RAD or reactive attachment disorder? I’ll give you a hint. Any diagnostic frame is, by definition, a reductionistic frame. Oh darn … I gave it away. Yes, RAD is framed by reductionism. And, yes, when your child is given a diagnosis of RAD, your child is being likewise reduced.

OK, lets review:

• People think using frames and not facts
• There are no right or wrong cognitive models but …
• Cognitive models do have consequences or entailments
• Cognitive models are defined, expressed, and disseminated through the use of frames
• In politics, the conservative frame is energized by a frame like “death taxes”
• In contrast, the liberal frame is energized by a frame like “membership fees for a free society”
• In psychology, the reductionistic frame is energized by a unitary frame like “attach or not attach”
• In contrast, there is no unitary frame like “attach or not attach” within the naturalistic systems frame

OK, I know what you’re thinking: “So, mister smarty pants, how does the naturalistic systems model get defined, expressed, and disseminated?” Or, asked another way, “What frame or frames got Bowlby excited?” I thought you’d never ask. I’ll (attempt to) answer these questions in my next blog post, but let me end by making one point: We’re not talking about Bowlby and Bert forming some type of naturalistic systems model cult. Suffice it to say that Bowlby was a part of a naturalistic systems movement that probably got its start with Bert’s late 1920s work and extended through the 1960s and into the 1970s. Here are some of the names associated with this movement (see if you don’t recognize a few):

• Margaret Mead (surely you recognize this one)
• Konrad Lorenz (who did the imprint studies with geese—see the 1996 movie Fly Away Home for an example of imprinting)
• Jean Piaget (can you say “object permanency”)
• W. Grey Walter (of robot tortoise fame)
• J.M. Tanner (who worked with UK orphans in the late 1940s)
• Bärbel Inhelder (who worked closely with Piaget)
• Erik Erikson (of psychosocial stages fame)
• Julian Huxley (a big name in avian ethology back in the early part of the last century)
• Ludwig von Bertalanffy (mentioned above)

There were others involved in this naturalistic systems theory movement but I mention the above list because they all (along with Bowlby) participated in the meetings that were a part of the Study Group on the Psychological Development of the Child mentioned above. One of the questions that continues to vex me is, “What happened to this naturalistic systems theory movement?” Dr. Metcalf’s article (mentioned above) was designed in part to get the ball rolling as far as trying to answer this question. The answer to this question will go a long way toward shedding light on why today most of Bowlby’s work is framed using a reductionistic model. Just remember our analogy from above: Bowlby was about “membership fees for a free society” whereas most current attachment types are about “tax relief.” As a side note, there is evidence to suggest that in his political life, Bowlby did indeed use a liberal model. For more on this theme, see Ben Mayhew’s 2006 article Between Love and Aggression: The Politics of John Bowlby. Stay tuned. More on frames and models and attachment to come (oh my).