ABSTRACT
Bowlby was aware of the fact that the way in which a child coped with the world was related in many ways to the parents', particularly the mother's, way of dealing with early experiences. Research associated with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) shows a clear relationship between a mother's attachment style and that of her infant ± insecurely attached mothers tend to have insecurely attached children (Main and Goldwyn, 1984). This idea is also borne out in research with animals (Francis et al., 1999). Schore (2003a) casts this phenomenon into neuroscienti®c language when he states that `attachment-related psychopathologies are thus expressed in dysregulation of social, behavioral, and biological functions that are associated with an immature frontolimbic control system and an inef®cient right hemisphere' (p. 66). Given what we have outlined above on the development of brain functions and their dependence on dyadic exchanges during critical periods, this is perhaps not very surprising. If the infant is dependent on a mother who is not capable of responding in a sensitively attuned way, and if this happens continuously at a signi®cant time during early development, then there is a serious risk that the infant will fail to lay down the pathways that would enable a suitably sensitive response to be offered later to their own child (Strathearn, 2007). The reality is that these mothers have themselves often suffered serious deprivations in their own childhoods (Famularo et al., 1992) leaving them with an impaired capacity to deal with stress (Post et al., 1994). Research by Fonagy and colleagues focusing on mental representation and re¯ective functioning also highlights this important intergenerational effect (Fonagy et al., 1991, 1993). Where such patterns exist it is likely to be important to work with the mother and child as a dyad in the therapeutic setting.
