ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses variations in emotion regulation associated with the more typical patterns of secure and insecure attachment. It focuses on how attachment relationships can undermine emotion regulation and engender fear. The chapter considers another behavioural system besides care-giving that is thoroughly intertwined with attachment: the exploratory behavioural system. It describes nurture over nature—the mother’s contribution to the child’s attachment security. The chapter also describes how a function of attachment—in infancy and beyond—is emotion regulation. It focuses on attachment and mentalizing in development and treatment provides the substance for their assertion. Attachment theory and research has a long developmental history, and awareness of this history prepares the ground for a summary of basic concepts and an overview of the ways in which attachment relationships evolve over the course of childhood. The chapter concludes with a summary of the impact of secure and insecure attachment on adjustment in childhood.
