In my previous post I introduced a few more book chapter ideas for my proposed book A Question of Attachment—Bowlby Less Traveled: The Book. In this final post of the series, I’d like to introduce three more chapter ideas, making eleven in all. Let’s dig in.
Of Phantom Limbs & Mice in Mazes—Evidence for Cognitive Maps
In preparation for writing A Question of Attachment, I thought it best to reread Bowlby’s trilogy on attachment. In making my way through the first chapters of volume one (Attachment: Attachment and Loss), I took note of how much emphasis Bowlby places on what are known as cognitive maps or models. In essence, Bowlby suggests that in order for us to understand what a behavioral system is (and attachment is, after all, a behavioral system), we have to understand what a cognitive model is. Here’s how Bowlby introduces the idea of a cognitive map:
In addition to the specific instructions that are required for an animal to achieve any set-goal, there is often another and more general requirement. This is that the animal should have at its disposal some schematic representation of the topography of the environment in which it is living. Only by reference to such a cognitive map [my emphasis] is an animal able to find its way quickly from any one part of its familiar environment to another. Rapid retreat to a place of safety by a troop of baboons is an example.
Now, Bowlby is quick to point out that a cognitive map is not simply a map like a topographic map. “To call our knowledge of the environment a map is, however, inadequate, because the word conjures up merely a static representation of topography,” alerts Bowlby. He continues, “If [a cognitive map] is to be of use in novel situations, it must be extended imaginatively to cover potential realities as well as experienced ones.” Bowlby gives us this “bottom line”: “If an individual is to draw up a plan to achieve a set-goal not only must he have some sort of working model of his environment, but he must have some working knowledge of his own behavioural skills and potentialities. Someone crippled or blind must make plans different from those made by the fit and sighted.” I talk about how cognitive maps differ from topo maps in my post of March 10, 2015, entitled Affectional Bonds—Bowlby on Inner Working Models and Expectation Fields. Another post you may wish to check out is Bowlby’s Connection to Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior posted on September 15, 2011.
To support his position concerning cognitive maps, Bowlby uses the example of mice in mazes. OK, experimenters actually use rats but mice in mazes has a poetic ring to it. Now, by his own admission, Bowlby uses references sparingly in his trilogy on attachment. When I hear about laboratory rats in mazes, I think of Edward Tolman’s seminal work with rats in mazes, which he conducted back in the 1940s. Is Bowlby referring to Tolman’s work? Hard to know. But let’s listen in as Bowlby describes these types of experiments:
As well as having equipment that enables them to recognize certain special parts of their environment, members of all but the most primitive phyla are possessed of equipment that enables them to organize such information as they have about their world into schemata or maps. Even laboratory rats will not apply themselves to maze-running until they have had time enough to acquire a more generalized knowledge of their environment, a knowledge of which they make good use given the opportunity.
In essence, Bowlby suggests that early attachment patterns play a role in essentially sculpting our cognitive maps and models. Bowlby goes so far as to suggest that psychopathology could be framed as cognitive models not well suited for the environment in which they operate. “As in the traditional [psychoanalytic] theory so in the theory advanced, much psychopathology is regarded as being due to models that are in greater or lesser degree inadequate or inaccurate,” writes Bowlby. In an article entitled An Evolutionary Function of the Depressive Reaction: The Cognitive Map Hypothesis, [1] Hans Welling suggests that the main purpose of depression is to give us an opportunity to update cognitive maps that are inadequate or otherwise out of date. Sadly, as Ernest Keen suggests in his book Chemicals for the Mind, feeding people a steady diet of antidepressants disrupts this natural process of updating cognitive models. And, honestly, I do not know how much psychotherapists know about cognitive maps let alone how to update them. But yet if we read Bowlby correctly, he’s suggesting two things: 1) psychotherapists should spend time learning about cognitive maps, wayfinding behavior, and spatial cognition, and, 2) psychotherapeutic intervention should take the form of updating cognitive models, of which psychotherapists receive little to no training in my opinion.
Sorry I have gone on about Bowlby’s take on cognitive maps but I think this is an area that has received short shrift. Suffice it to say that I’ll try to flesh out the cognitive map story in A Question of Attachment. And what of phantom limbs? Often people who have had a limb removed will have experiences or sensations that suggest that the limb is still there. These experiences or sensations could take the form of a simple annoying itch that cannot be scratched. Unfortunately phantom experiences or sensations could take the form of pain beyond the level of annoyance. What phantom limb experiences or sensations tell us is that the brain harbors a map of the body and that even though the actual limb is gone, the schematic representation of that limb (and its relation to the rest of the body) is still in the brain. [2] Phantom limb provides evidence that the brain holds a map of the body and that this map is in need of updating. All of this was profiled in an episode of the TV program House. Take a look:
I’d be remiss if I did not mention that neurobiologist Antonio Damasio spends considerable time looking at cognitive maps in his popular books such as his 2010 book entitled Self Comes to Mind. Like Bowlby, Damasio talks about how the brain uses cognitive models to run “as if” scenarios, or as Bowlby calls them “small-scale experiments within the head.” Study of cognitive maps has gone on unabated since the time of Tolman (the 1940s). Unfortunately, this is a topic that has been left behind by followers of Bowlby. This chapter will bring the attachment–cognitive map connection back to the fore.
The Three Behavioral Systems—Attachment, Caregiving(receiving), and Sex
I’ve written about this topic extensively in earlier posts. Even in the early chapters of volume one Bowlby talks about the need for balancing, coordinating, and integrating behavioral systems. I’ve gone so far as to refer to the grand system that is comprised of attachment, caregiving(receiving), and sex as the Grand Bowlbian Attachment Environment or GBAE. For a summary of these posts on GBAE, see my post of February 1, 2011 entitled Getting Back On Track With the “Grand Bowlbian Attachment Environment.” I think understanding GBAE is important. Why? Allow me to answer this question by referring to an article that helped shape how our Foundation, back in the early 2000s, approached using attachment as a guide to our grantmaking efforts.
The article is by Carole Pistole and is entitled Preventing Teenage Pregnancy: Contributions from Attachment Theory. [3] Contact the Foundation for a copy of this article (used by permission). Essentially Pistole tells us that early difficulties within the attachment behavioral system could be played out within the sex behavioral system in adolescence. When I was a psychotherapist working with troubled teens, I was ill prepared for young adolescent girls who told me that they were happy to be pregnant because, finally, their baby would provide them with the unconditional love (e.g., the attachment relationship) they so desperately desired. Dr. Pistole tries to convince us that behavior emanating from either the sex or caregiving(receiving) behavioral system may be revealing something about the early developmental history of the attachment behavioral system. Even though Bowlby does talk about all three behavioral systems and the need to balance, coordinate, and integrate them, again, it’s another topic that has been left behind by followers of Bowlby (Pistole a lone exception). [4]
Objectification and Pornography—Contributions from Bowlbian Attachment Theory
I am here riffing on the title to Dr. Pistole’s article. This chapter idea may be going a bit out on a limb. In this chapter I’d like to suggest that at the heart of the process of objectification—one person treating another as if they were an object—is the idea that there are difficulties balancing, coordinating, and integrating the behavioral systems that make up the Grand Bowlbian Attachment Environment. I would suggest that in the example above, young adolescent girls are viewing their unborn children more as love objects than persons. If you’ll recall from my chapter idea on a three layer model of the brain, the middle layer is essentially concerned with objects. Is it possible that the processes of objectification are largely about living out of the object brain? I’ll speculate on this question in this chapter. In the early chapters of volume one, Bowlby writes about what happens when a child is subjected to multiple separations as would be expected when a child goes for a hospital stay of some length. Bowlby writes:
After a series of upsets at losing several mother-figures [i.e., multiple nurses providing care to the child] to whom in turn he has given some trust and affection, he will gradually commit himself less and less to succeeding figures and in time will stop altogether attaching himself to anyone. He will become increasingly self-centered and, instead of directing desires and feelings towards people, will become preoccupied with material things [e.g., objects] such as sweets, toys, and food.
I believe in the above Bowlby is hinting at the pathogenesis of objectification. [5] Further, I would argue that pornography in specific and objectification in general are ways of answering the question asked by insecure attachment, which, for review, is:
How do I find intimacy and connection while at the same time avoiding the pain that loss of intimacy and connection inevitably brings?
In my opinion, the contributions that Bowlbian attachment theory could make to our understanding of objectification have been largely overlooked. I’ll take a stab at rectifying this oversight.
So, there you have eleven chapter ideas. I have ideas for two or three more, but I’ll keep those a secret until A Question of Attachment comes out. As always, use the Contact Us link to leave your comments concerning these chapters ideas. Or if there’s a chapter you’d like to see, let me know. Now, I should point out that once I start this book project in earnest, my posts here at BLT will become more sporadic. So much to write; so little time ;-)
Notes:
[1] This article can be found in New Ideas in Psychology (August 2003, vol. 21, issue 2, p. 147–156).
[2] In the January, 2010, issue of National Geographic, there’s an article entitled A Better Life With Bionics. This article in part talks about how bionics scientists are creating human–machine interfaces that tap into our “body in the brain” cognitive maps. Bionics scientists recognize that the schematic representation of a lost limb is still there. Rather than attempting to update the body in the brain map by effectively “mapping over” the lost limb, scientists are attempting (with some success) to first tap into the body in the brain map, and then route these connections to a mechanical limb. The idea is that if a person is able to “clench their fist in the brain” (as shown in the above House video), they should then be able to clench a mechanical fist via a human–machine interface that utilizes the body in the brain map. Again, work with cognitive maps has gone on unabated. Sadly, these efforts have not been fed-back to attachment theory. A Question of Attachment will take a first pass at trying to create these necessary feedback loops.
[3] This article can be found in Journal of Mental Health Counseling, (April 1999, vol. 21, issue 2).
[4] Believe it or not, the idea that attachment behavior can change form as other behavioral systems come “online” (to use a computer metaphor) gains some support from evolutionary psychology. Back in 2009, Marco Del Giudice wrote an article entitled Sex, Attachment, and the Development of Reproductive Strategies. When I read his article it seemed as if Dr. Del Giudice was proposing two different attachment systems: one that operates in childhood before sexual maturation, and another that comes online in adolescence as the sex behavioral system comes to the fore. I emailed Dr. Del Giudice and asked him about this novel idea, that there are two attachment behavioral systems. Dr. Del Giudice was kind enough to respond and wrote the following:
I’m not really proposing that another attachment system comes online at puberty; I’m proposing that the one, original attachment system becomes partly differentiated across development, and starts working with different rules in different types of relationships.
A bit further along in his email Del Giudice writes:
After some years, I’m frustrated by the fact that nobody seems to be doing much to really understand how attachment operates in different contexts—is there one system with multiple “rule sets,” multiple partially differentiated systems, two entirely distinct systems (attachment and sex), or…?
I get Dr. Del Giudice’s frustration. The attachment behavioral system has to change as other behavioral systems come online. Even Bowlby would agree that balancing, coordinating, and integrating behavioral systems has to take place, and these processes will change the nature of attachment behavior. As one simple example, when a woman becomes pregnant, this huge psychological and physiological change will often dramatically change the overall profile of attachment, caregiving(receiving), and sex. As mentioned above, loss can result in all three behavioral systems becoming depressed at the same time. In the same way Bowlby tells us that we cannot effectively evaluate a behavioral system without considering the environment in which it operates, we cannot adequately evaluate the operation of the attachment behavioral system without considering other behavioral systems as well.
One of my criticisms of the AAI (adult attachment interview) centers on how it tries to bypass the sex behavioral system (which, in its defense, may be by design). The person taking the AAI is asked to use mental time travel to answer questions as if they were five or six years old, before sexual maturation. To Dr. Del Giudice’s point, “nobody seems to be doing much to really understand how attachment operates in different contexts.” Or how attachment operates within the presence of other behavioral systems. So, I think Del Giudice’s question concerning other contexts is a good one. I’m sorry but the only reference info I have for Del Giudice’s article is: 2009 in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
[5] This is a bit of a stretch but I would suggest that Bowlby offers a few insights on what drives the process of objectification in the 1939 book he co-wrote with political activist Evan Durbin entitled Personal Aggressiveness and War.
