In my post of July 15th, 2011, I announced that we are going to start the process of moving the content from our current web site over to this blog site. You will be able to access content related directly to the Foundation by using the Foundation Web Site link shown above. As many of you know, the old web site contains a quote feature. Random quotes appear in the masthead area of each page. Over the course of several years I populated the quotes feature with quotes drawn not only from Bowlby’s work but also from the work of other authors as well. I selected quotes that I thought captured some essence of Bowlbian attachment theory. I pulled from such attachment luminaries as Daniel Stern, Peter Fonagy, Jeremy Holmes, Stephen Mitchell, Sue Gerhardt, and Peter Marris. But I also pulled from authors that have a lot to say about Bowlbian attachment theory but otherwise are not names one naturally associates with Bowlby’s work. I pulled from such names as Erich Fromm, Jane Jacobs, Edwin Hutchins, Jacques Ellul, George Lakoff, Howard Gardner, Howard Bloom, Maureen Dowd, and Richard Nisbett (among others).
One of my first tasks in moving the old web site over to this blog site was to find a suitable random quote plug-in. This is one of the many things I love about WordPress—it is easily extensible in so many different ways. I searched on “random quotes” in the plug-in area and, boom, I was presented with many different random quote plug-in choices. I picked one that looked easy to populate and administer, installed it, and away we go. Now all I had to do was to cut and paste the quotes from the old system over to this new plug-in. As I cut and pasted each quote into the new system, I gave them a look see just to make sure there were no typos or other mistakes. Yes, I found a couple like “loose” instead of “lose.” As I was proofreading the quotes, I found myself commenting, “Damn, that’s a good one.” I also found myself thinking, “In this day and age of 140 character tweets and text messages, these quotes tell an interesting story about Bowlbian attachment theory.” So, I thought I’d group together ten or so of these quotes and use them as the basis for a post, which you are now reading. Here’s vol. 1 of a tweet or text message approach to Bowlbian attachment theory. Sorry, you’ll still have to refer back to the resources area of the old web site to find the references from which these quotes were taken.
“The present moment can be held hostage by either the past or the future.”—Daniel Stern (2004)
“Recognition of metaphorical systems can help us avoid dehumanization and preconceived categorizations.”—Audrey Shafer
“Probably in all normal people, attachment continues in one form or another throughout life ….”—John Bowlby (1956)
“In and of itself, verbally understanding, explaining, or narrating something is not sufficient to bring about change.”—Daniel Stern (2004)
“Infants learn rapidly, but the learning situation must respect the duration of the present moment [about 3 seconds].”—Daniel Stern (2004)
“The moment when someone can participate in another’s lived story … a different kind of human contact is created.”—Daniel Stern (2004)
“For the fullest connection between people, attachment and intersubjectivity are needed, plus love.”—Daniel Stern (2004)
“[The symbology of serpent and lion together]—that is to say, life and consciousness incorporated in a temporal body—[represents] consciousness and life engaged in the field of time, of birth and death.”—Joseph Campbell (1990)
“Falling in love … could be called a special state of mental organization because it pulls together so many diverse behaviors, feelings, and thoughts into an integrated assembly that is readily recognized.”—Daniel Stern (2004)
“I had hoped to find a god or goddess from antiquity who held the gift of mindreading … and could offer it to a human [but then I realized that back then] there was little need for the gift of making other’s minds transparent.”—Daniel Stern (2004)
“If one is unable to infer the intentions of others, or profoundly uninterested in doing so, they will act outside of the human pale.”—Daniel Stern (2004)
If you have a favorite quote that reflects some essence of Bowlbian attachment theory, leave a comment and I’ll see about putting it into our new random quote plug-in.
