As most of you know, John Bowlby, arguably the father of attachment theory, wrote three volumes on the subject (often referred to collectively as Bowlby’s trilogy). The main title for each volume was Attachment and Loss. The subtitle for each volume was different and set the tone for what was to come: vol. I – Attachment (1969/1982); vol. II – Separation—Anxiety and Anger (1973); and vol. III – Loss—Sadness and Depression (1980). The first volume is rather unique in that it was released in two editions, the first edition coming in 1969 and the second in 1982. In the second edition of the first volume (which is the only edition I have read), we get a rare treat: Bowlby thinking about Bowlby in what can only be called an exquisite example of metacognition. Simply put, metacognition is the process of thinking about one’s own thinking. Sure, authors will often write a new preface or even an afterword to accompany a new edition (see Christopher Lasch’s 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism for an example of the latter). However, in the second edition of the first volume, we are treated to “early 1980s Bowlby” commenting on “late 60s Bowlby” right there in the text. I found this approach most fascinating and also significant, as we will see momentarily.
In the first few pages of the preface to vol. I, Bowlby points to “roadways” that would be familiar to most Bowlbians:
- Bowlby began work on attachment theory proper starting in 1956.
- In the early years, Bowlby worked closely with James Robertson (a social worker who spent years observing young kids in various hospital settings and ultimately created the movie A Two-year-old goes to Hospital (1952) as a way of showing that prolonged hospital stays could produce emotional disturbances).
- In 1950, Bowlby was asked by the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the long-term effects homelessness may produce in the literally hundreds if not thousands of orphans roaming the war-torn streets of post WWII Europe. He released his report in 1951 under the title of Maternal Care and Mental Health. The WHO still refers to this report in their present day materials on child mental health (thanks to Dr. Gary Metcalf for bringing this point to my attention).
I’m not going to take any of the above familiar roadways in this post. Instead, I’d like to take a roadway less traveled. At the beginning to the preface to vol. I (page xxvii to be exact), Bowlby states: “The field I had set out to plough so lightheartedly was no less than the one that Freud had started tilling sixty years earlier ….” Immediately I am hit with this image of Bowlby and Freud both on tractors, both in overalls, both ready to start ploughing (using the British spelling here) a field. On the surface Bowlby’s use of metaphoric imagery may seem like so much cute persuasion, but I think it runs deeper than that. OK, I’ll come right out and say it: Bowlby’s use of metaphoric imagery (like psychoanalysts, whose work is separated by a half century, readying to till fields) throughout his trilogy provides evidence that Bowlby was adept at what cognitive researchers Fauconner and Turner call conceptual blending. (See Fauconner and Turner’s 2002 book The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities for more on this topic.) At the risk of simplifying Fauconner and Turner’s work to the point of libel, conceptual blending is centrally about taking elements from one conceptual domain and blending them with elements from another. In the above image, we have elements from psychoanalysis blended with elements from farming. The above image also employs what Fauconner and Turner call a compression of time—Freud and Bowlby in the same place at the same time even though in reality their work is separated by decades. When you think about your own thinking (for instance, Bowlby’s metacognition from above), you are engaging in a conceptual blend—blending elements from your earlier thinking with elements from your current thinking using a compression of time.
Well, so what … Bowlby used metaphoric constructions and was able to engage in conceptual blending. Big deal. Actually, it is a big deal. To engage in empathy—minds knowing minds—one must be able to engage in conceptual blending. Simply put, minds knowing minds is a form of conceptual blending—blending elements from one’s own mind with elements drawn from another’s mind using a material compression, that is to say, the blend is conceptually in one mind, in one place, however the minds themselves exist in two separate physical spaces.
Again, so what. (Man, tough crowd.) As I point out in my post of June 15th, 2010, attachment types, whether clinicians, researchers, or aficionados, will often say something like, “Early secure attachment relationships, if all goes well, tend to result in the development of open and flexible Inner Working Models.” They will go on to say that an open and flexible Inner Working Model is the foundation upon which empathy is built. I’d like to flesh out that idea a bit further by suggesting that one of the hallmarks of an open and flexible Inner Working Model is the ability to engage in conceptual blending, such as the conceptual blending associated with an empathetic connection.
In my next post I’ll talk about conceptual blends whereby core essences are extended using different conceptual systems. As Bowlby points out (again, on page xxvii), both he and Freud encountered the same “rocky excrescences and thorny entanglements”—love and hate, anxiety and defence, attachment and loss—as they ploughed the psychoanalytic field in front of them. However, there was one strong difference. Bowlby puts it this way: “What had deceived me was that my furrows had been started from a corner diametrically opposite to the one at which Freud had entered and through which analysts have always followed. ”Bowlby gives us this “bottom line”: “From a new viewpoint a familiar landscape can sometimes look very different.” In other words, Bowlby and Freud looked at the same core issues— love and hate, anxiety and defence, attachment and loss—but they used diametrically opposite viewpoints or worldviews to extend them. Recognizing that Bowlby and Freud looked at similar core issues but framed them using worldviews diametrically opposed to each other, is, in my opinion, a Bowlby less traveled.
