Purchases are held in your own personalised online library and accessed via your browser or through the app on your phone or tablet. Selective attachments, then, begin to form from birth and early infancy is a critical period for their development, but there are further key stages throughout childhood. If everyone could only understand what the alternatives to stable attachment are, a lifetime of suffering, surely the world could be transformed!

Ambivalent: In contrast, where the caregiver responds to the infant's demands, but only in a sporadic, unpredictable and at times insensitive fashion, the infant finds it difficult to achieve proximity in a reliable way. These controlling behaviours usually include role-reversal in which a child acts towards others like a parent might towards a child e. Attachment behaviours may attract the caregiver's attention in a positive way, for example, cooing, smiling and reaching out.The Secure Base Model provides a framework for caregivers and for those who support them to think in more detail about the different but connected caregiving approaches that can help a child to move towards greater security.

A powerful, well written book, much recommended to those with attachment (close relationship) issues.The text cited above also gives an idea of how the author draws from ideas and results from ethology (especially Konrad Lorenz studies). However, feelings of anxiety and fear remain unresolved and reappear in sometimes chaotic and destructive forms at times of stress. I found many of his precepts compatible with the client-centred therapy of Carl Rogers, which is the theoretical framework for counselling with which I am most familiar. Children's behaviours become organised around their expectations of themselves and others and, as they grow older, these expectations tend to influence the way in which others relate to them. During the earliest years of our lives, indeed, emotional expression and its reception are the only means of communication we have.