ABSTRACT
The most important developmental issue involved in attachment is the establishment of the basis of our affective security, which forms the basis of the quality and the solidity of our engagement with others. In 1987, C. Hazan and P. R. Shaver demonstrated how one can find, in the romantic experience, the same types of attachment organization as in children. All discussion as to the psychodynamics of attachment must take a person’s socio-cultural field into account. Attachment pathologies are the persistent and recurrent pathodynamics in a variety of contexts, with a greater preponderance in intimate relationships. Two main types of attachment pathology can be recognized: the schizoid-avoidant and the anxious-ambivalent. The capacity to feel a warm experience and to express it to the other is one of the central elements of attachment. The “strange situation” experiment was devised to study attachment patterns of very young children.
