ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a theory of the mechanisms of attachment formation, focusing mainly on the infant. It begins with the initial assumption that birth is a traumatic experience for infant and mother, involving a considerable degree of incongruity between the circumstances of birth and fetal experience. Hence, increases in arousal and stimulation-seeking would be expected to occur. Attachment to the source of stimulation, as opposed simply to affiliation, appears to be based on the further requirement of perceptual differentiation. Learning is enhanced by increases in arousal and the formation of attachments depends on learning. The central proposition is that an individual's cognitive map must be "broken down" before radical changes in attitudes or attachments can occur. The theories of attachment formation have failed to account for the paradoxical effects of punishment, that is, the observation that punishment speeds up the formation of attachments and serves to maintain them as well as, more obviously, causing withdrawal.
