SOBN (Sphere O’Blog News) – We ended Part 2 with you telling us that you are planning to use the same blogging model that you saw depicted in the 2009 movie Julie & Julia. Please tell us more.
Rick – In the movie Julie & Julia, the character Julie (fashioned after real world blogger Julie Powell) sets out to cook all the recipes contained in Julia Child’s famous cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year’s time. Julie decides to blog about the experience. I’d like to try to do the same.
SOBN – You’re going to cook all of those recipes?
Rick – (laughs) No, of course not. What I’m proposing to do here with the Bowlby Less Traveled blog is to read through all three volumes of John Bowlby’s trilogy on attachment—hopefully in one year—and then to blog about my experience. But, I’d like to use a “behind the scenes” type lens.
SOBN – Like Paul Harvey’s The Rest of the Story series.
Rick – Exactly. In my opinion, there’s much to the Bowlby story—contained right there in his trilogy—that gets short shrift these days if talked about at all. As I read through Bowlby’s trilogy, my eye will go toward those “less traveled” elements.
SOBN – Can you give us an example to whet our appetites.
Rick – Sure. Let me see if I can’t whip up a quick BLT sandwich for you. In his trilogy, Bowlby often talks about what he calls Inner Working Models, IWMs for short. Today, Bowlbian attachment types—whether clinicians or researchers or simply aficionados—will say something like, “Early secure attachment relationships, if all goes well, tend to result in the development of open and flexible Inner Working Models.” That’s great but most of us (myself included) are left with questions like, “OK, what the heck is an Inner Working Model, what are they exactly, what are they good for, how exactly do they get setup, and how do they help or hinder my life?” I hate to say it but Bowlby really doesn’t answer these questions in his trilogy in any detail. He writes as if knowledge concerning IWMs is a given. And in his defense, maybe back in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, IWMs were a hot, very alive topic. Today, attachment types talk about IWMs as if they are archeological artifacts, and in some ways, Inner Working Models are artifacts in that they are a dead topic … at least to attachment types.
SOBN – What do you mean?
Rick – The topic may be dead as far as attachment types are concerned, but it’s a topic very much alive in other areas. As an example, AI or artificial intelligence researcher Andy Clark writes extensively about Inner Working Models (or simply cognitive models) in his 2003 book Natural Born Cyborgs—Minds, Technology, and the Future of Human Intelligence.
SOBN – So, it sounds like there are topics that Bowlby talks about in his trilogy—like cognitive models—that are not of central importance to attachment types these days, but are of major concern to people working in other disciplines, like AI.
Rick – Exactly. Bowlby was the quintessence of an interdisciplinary researcher. He pulled from such diverse areas as ethology or animal studies, cognitive science, learning theory, systems theory, biology, psychology, medicine (he was after all a trained medical doctor), cybernetics, information processing, and the list goes on.
SOBN – Cognitive models …
Rick – … yes, and the aforementioned discipline of cognitive models, right. Part of my goal in writing the BLT blog is to point out how much we lose by not approaching Bowlby’s trilogy using the same interdisciplinary mindset that Bowlby used. As I travel the Bowlby less traveled, I hope to point out as many of these interdisciplinary breaks as I possibly can.
SOBN – With all due respect, do you feel qualified enough to point out interdisciplinary breaks?
Rick – I hope so. Like Bowlby, I started my academic career in the highly interdisciplinary field of geology. If memory serves, Bowlby started out as a naturalist—a precursor to the field of geology. Again, like Bowlby, I later moved over to the world of psychology.
SOBN – Hmmm … seems like a Julie & Julia type connection.
Rick – Hadn’t thought about it that way, but, yes, Bowlby and I do share that “geology to psychology” shift. Darwin made that same shift, a shift that Bowlby writes about in his final 1989 book Charles Darwin—A New Life. I can’t help but think that Darwin’s “geology to psychology” shift played a role in Bowlby’s shift as well.
SOBN – Well, best of luck with your Julie & Julia approach to your Bowlby Less Traveled blog.
Rick – Thanks much. If you smell smoke then you’ll know that I burned the béarnaise sauce. (laughs)
