19min
In Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love, Robert Karen analyses past and present psychological studies on attachment bonds, and how they affect our emotional development. He suggests that, whether there are good or bad, our interactions with our parents during very early childhood have a huge impact on the rest of our lives.
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Analysis and key concepts
01.
Parents have the power to shape and influence the way their children learn to love
02.
A mother’s love is almost always irreplaceable, and newborn babies must be surrounded by love, in order for them to develop and achieve their full potential
03.
A mother must become a ‘safe haven’ for her child, so that they feel safe and free to explore the world
04.
An unstable ‘safe haven’ will harm the attachment bond between mother and child
05.
Children learn to interpret the world through their mother’s eyes
06.
Our parenting style has a huge effect on how our child develops an attachment bond and their future ability to relate to other people
07.
The role of the father, and his behaviour towards the child’s mother, also influences the child’s attachment style
08.
We have to learn to recognise our own feelings, in order to teach our children to do the same
09.
Quotes
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Take-home message
As humans, we spend our entire lives searching for what we call ‘love’, to such an extent that many people believe that giving and receiving love is the only thing that really matters in life. Love often guides us in a certain direction, and we follow it even if we do not know where it will take us, so it ends up shaping our entire life. Humans have not yet found a definitive or universal answer to the question ‘what is love?’, but we do know that it is extremely important to all of us, from the day we are born.
Children and babies need love more than anyone, because they would not be able to survive without external help, but they are also the least aware and most impressionable. This dynamic has been studied extensively over the years.
Scientists initially focused on biological and genetic factors, as they hoped to find the answers in our DNA, but their studies were largely unsuccessful. Researchers then began to realise that the environment in which children grow up is capable of strongly influencing their development. They began to see children as blank slates, on which their family and society could write whatever they wanted, but this was not exactly true either.
Eventually, a number of experts began to analyse our inner, unconscious drives, and suggested that they were responsible for the child’s development. They observed the influence of the mother-child relationship on the child, and discovered the mental and psychological mechanisms that shape our capacity to love and to be loved. Scientists soon realised that the mother figure plays a crucial role in the affective development of her child, and that much of a child’s future ability to give love to themselves and to others can actually be traced back to this relationship.
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The author
Robert Karen is a clinical psychologist and an adjunct professor at the Derner Institute for Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University, New York. His most well-known publications include the books Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love, The Forgiving Self: The Road from Resentment to Connection, and Top Dog Bottom Dog: The Hidden Dynamics of Power, Intimacy and Self-Esteem.
Edition
Publishing house:
Oxford University Press
Year:
1998
Pages:
512
ISBN:
978-0195115017