John Bowlby's Theory Of Adult Attachment

Research has found that adult attachment is close to emotional intimate relationships. John Bowlby’s theory of attachment attempts to understand the powerful distress experienced by infants who are separated from their parents. Drawing on ethological theory, Bowlby postulated that these attachment behaviors, such as crying and searching, were adaptive responses to separation from a primary attachment figure--someone who provides support, protection, and care. Bowlby argued that, over the course of evolutionary history, infants who were able to maintain proximity to an attachment figure via attachment behaviors would be more likely to survive to a reproductive age. According to Bowlby, a motivational system, what he called the attachment behavioral system, was gradually "designed" by natural selection to regulate proximity to an attachment figure. Although Bowlby believed that the basic dynamics described above captured the normative dynamics of the attachment behavioral system, he recognized that there are individual differences in the way children appraise the

On the basis of these parallels, the adult romantic relationships, like infant-caregiver relationships, are attachments, and that romantic love is a property of the attachment behavioral system, as well as the motivational systems that give rise to caregiving and sexuality. In short, if we assume that adult relationships are attachment relationships, it is possible that children who are secure as children will grow up to be secure in their romantic relationships (Fraley, 2010). I shared this to say that this could apply to adult children who fail to launch. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about Dr. Brooks video about the problem with emotional attachment to