Defensive Exclusion Research Articles

Bowlby's trilogy

SUMMARYJohn Bowlby's ‘Attachment and Loss’ trilogy set the scene for half a century of attachment research and theorising. This article picks out the key themes of his work – the attachment dynamic, the impact of trauma and life events, defensive exclusion, loss and bereavement, and internal working models – and points to their continuing relevance.

Such stuff as dreams are made on: John Bowlby and the interpretation of dreams

ABSTRACT In this paper, newly uncovered archival material from the Bowlby archives is presented on Bowlby’s own dreams and dream interpretation. Although he was critical of orthodox psychoanalysis, Bowlby appears to have been seriously involved in Freudian dream interpretation in the 1930s and 1940s. Here, we present in annotated form his own interpretations of several of his dreams from that time and a series of lectures on dreams. In Attachment and Loss, classic dream interpretation is absent and Bowlby used the content of dreams as a reflection of the influence of real-life experiences on the representations of attachment relations, with a clear focus on grief, loss, and mourning. Bowlby’s shift from psychoanalysis to a more behavioral approach and the introduction of the concept of “defensive exclusion” to supplant Freud’s concept of “repression” may have led him to think about how grief and mourning may affect the content of our dreams.

Interparental hostility and children's externalizing symptoms: Attention to anger as a mediator.

This study examined children's attention biases to negative emotional stimuli as mediators of associations between interparental hostility and children's externalizing symptoms. Participants included 243 children (Mage = 4.60 years) and their parents and teachers across three annual measurement occasions. Cross-lagged latent change analyses revealed that the association between interparental hostility and children's externalizing symptoms was mediated by children's attention to angry, but not sad or fearful, adult faces. Consistent with defensive exclusion models, the multimethod, multi-informant assessment of interparental hostility at Wave 1 specifically predicted decreases in children's attention to angry faces from Waves 1 to 2 in a visual search task. Declines in children's attention to anger, in turn, predicted increases in teacher reports of their externalizing problems across the three waves. Follow-up analyses further indicated that children's decreasing levels of emotional security in the interparental relationship were associated with the decreases in children's attention to angry stimuli. Results are discussed in relation to how they inform and advance information processing and social threat models in developmental psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record

Représentations des pratiques éducatives parentales et estime de soi chez des enfants placés en fratrie versus séparément

Despite abuse, children placed in childcare homes have parental representations which are marked by ambivalence. This ambivalence is characterized by the coexistence of negative and positive representation towards their biological parents. However, the fact that positive representations towards neglecting parents persist can possibly harm self-esteem. Placement aims not only to protect the child, but also to offer him the possibility of reconstructing his self-image with more secure attachment figures. When a placement is decided, the children are entrusted to Child Welfare and are placed either with their siblings or separately. This study aims to examine the parental representations and the self-esteem of 33 children that are placed with siblings and 25 children that are placed alone; all children were between the ages of 10 and 18. Then, the relation between parental representations and self-esteem was examined in each group. Those two dimensions have been respectively measured with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale and the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI). The results show that participants placed with their siblings were less depressed and had a better self-esteem than participants placed separately. Moreover, although the two groups had neglecting parents, the participants placed with their siblings had significantly better parental care representations. This study also put into light that the links between parental representations and self-esteem are significantly different whether the participant is placed with his siblings or not. Among children placed with siblings, the more positive the images of the father and the mother, the lower the self-esteem level. These results confirm the hypothesis according to which a positive parental care representation could reinforce the negative image those children have of themselves. The results also question the effects (positive or negative) of the defensive exclusion process on the evolution of self-representations among placed children. Finally, from a therapeutic point of view, they stress the importance of working on self-esteem with placed children.

New frontiers and applications of attachment theory.

New frontiers and applications of attachment theory.

Anorexia and attachment: dysregulated defense and pathological mourning.

The role of defensive exclusion (Deactivation and Segregated Systems) in the development of early relationships and related to subsequent manifestations of symptoms of eating disorders was assessed using the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP). Fifty-one DSM-IV diagnosed women with anorexia participated in the study. Anorexic patients were primarily classified as dismissing or unresolved. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of defensive exclusion were carried out. Results showed potential benefits of using the AAP defense exclusion coding system, in addition to the main attachment classifications, in order to better understand the developmental issues involved in anorexia. Discussion concerned the processes, such as pathological mourning, that may underlie the associations between dismissing and unresolved attachment and anorexia. Implications for developmental research and clinical nosology are discussed.

Attachment and children's biased attentional processing: evidence for the exclusion of attachment-related information.

Research in both infants and adults demonstrated that attachment expectations are associated with the attentional processing of attachment-related information. However, this research suffered from methodological issues and has not been validated across ages. Employing a more ecologically valid paradigm to measure attentional processes by virtue of eye tracking, the current study tested the defensive exclusion hypothesis in late childhood. According to this hypothesis, insecurely attached children are assumed to defensively exclude attachment-related information. We hypothesized that securely attached children process attachment- related neutral and emotional information in a more open manner compared to insecurely attached children. Sixty-two children (59.7% girls, 8–12 years) completed two different tasks, while eye movements were recorded: task one presented an array of neutral faces including mother and unfamiliar women and task two presented the same with happy and angry faces. Results indicated that more securely attached children looked longer at mother’s face regardless of the emotional expression. Also, they tend to have more maintained attention to mother’s neutral face. Furthermore, more attachment avoidance was related to a reduced total viewing time of mother’s neutral, happy, and angry face. Attachment anxiety was not consistently related to the processing of mother’s face. Findings support the theoretical assumption that securely attached children have an open manner of processing all attachment-related information.

Complicated Grief

<p>M. Katherine Shear, MD; and Elizabeth Mulhare, MSW</p> <p>The death of a loved one can be one of the most painful experiences of a lifetime. The grief response that follows such a loss is often intense and debilitating. Nevertheless, studies document that, difficult though it may be, most people come to terms with the death of a loved one and regain their interest and engagement in ongoing life. Adjustment occurs during a period of acute grief, during which confrontation with the painful reality oscillates with defensive exclusion, in the form of numbing, focus on positive memories, imagined reunion, and other forms of respite in which attention is directed toward neutral or positive thoughts. Although there is a general progression from numbing and disbelief to painful acknowledgment and ultimate integration of loss and grief, discrete stages cannot be discerned. Clinicians should be cautious about suggesting that a bereaved person can expect to follow a predictable pathway. In the words of C.S. Lewis: </p> <h4>ABOUT THE AUTHORS</h4> <p>M. Katherine Shear, MD, is with the Columbia University School of Social Work, and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY. Elizabeth Mulhare, MSW, is with the Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY.</p> <p>Address correspondence to: M. Katherine Shear, MD, 1255 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027; or e-mail <a href="mailto:ks2394@columbia.edu">ks2394@columbia.edu</a>.</p> <p>Dr. Shear and Ms. Mulhare have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.</p> <h4>EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES</h4> <ol><li>Describe an attachment-based model of acute, integrated, and complicated grief (CG). </li> <li>Describe the clinical syndrome of CG and its differential diagnosis. </li> <li>Explain the goals, strategies, and techniques used in psychotherapy for CG. </li> </ol>

‘If I commit to you, I betray my parents’: some negative consequences of the intergenerational cycle of insecure attachment for young adult romantic relationships

Parents' insecure attachment style can result in a propensity to unconsciously triangulate their children into helping them manage their own attachment problems. This paves the way for abusive behaviour against which children may defend themselves through idealization and defensive exclusion so hampering their development as autonomous beings and predisposing them towards an avoidant patterning of attachment. When these children face leaving home, physically and emotionally, and committing to a romantic relationship, this patterning may create problems. Using extracts from a therapy session with a pre-marital couple to illustrate the affective background in the couple's families-of-origin, we discuss potential consequences of parents' insecure attachment for a child's self-perception and relationships when leaving the parental home. We also describe an affect-focused intervention to help break the intergenerational cycle of insecure attachment.

Adult Attachment and Preemptive Defenses: Converging Evidence on the Role of Defensive Exclusion at the Level of Encoding

The objective of this research was to determine whether the tendency of highly avoidant adults not to recall attachment-related information is best explained through defensive strategies that operate on encoding or retrieval processes. In Study 1 participants listened to an emotionally evocative recording and were given both explicit and implicit tests of their memory for the material. Compared to less avoidant people, highly avoidant people recalled fewer details from the recording and performed worse on an implicit test of their memory for the information. In Study 2 we manipulated people's motivation to retrieve information from memory by offering participants a monetary award for recall. Highly avoidant people recalled less information than less-avoidant people despite the monetary incentive. Taken together, these results suggest that the relative inability of avoidant adults to recall attachment-related information is due to the defensive exclusion of information at the time of encoding rather than the time of retrieval.

La mise en place des représentations d'attachement au sein du couple : parts relatives à l'enfance et au conjoint

The aim of the present study is to compare childhood attachment representations with representations relative to present love relationships, and examine the possible role of the partner's representations when differences are found between the two types of representations. Twenty-two couples passed the Adult Attachment Interview ( George et al., 1985), as well as an attachment interview on their present love relationship. Statistical analyses revealed a stronger concordance between childhood and adult representations among insecure people, compared with secure participants. Also, men seemed more inclined to maintain the same type of attachment representations regarding their love relationship as those developed with respect to parents. These findings suggest that defensive exclusion prevents the formation of new attachment representations and the updating of internal working models. The role played by gender remains unclear and warrants further research.

Assessing Attachment Cognitions and Their Associations with Depression in Youth with Eating or Drug Misuse Disorders

The study investigates associations between attachment cognitions and depression symptoms in 71 15–25-year-olds, 26 of whom have eating disorders, and 20 of whom are drug misusers. Attachment cognitions were measured with the CaMir Q-sort, which provides indexes for secure, avoidant, and preoccupied attachment, as well as scores on 13 dimensions. The BDI-13 was used to measure depressive symptomatology. Consistent with the literature, BDI scores were associated with cognitions of preoccupied attachment. They were also related to cognitions of avoidant attachment, confirming Bowlby's theory on defensive exclusion. For participants with eating disorders, depressive symptomatology was related to preoccupation and parental interference, whereas for drug misusers, it was negatively related to security, preoccupation, parental support, and lack of parental concern. These findings help understand how attachment cognitions may participate in depressive symptomatology, namely in youth whose behavior problems may be associated with specific attachment experiences.

Trauma and defences: their roots in relationship. An overview.

In this paper the differing psychodynamic models of defences are outlined and compared with an attachment theory perspective in which affect regulation plays a central role. Behavioural and intrapsychic distance regulation (defensive exclusion) are seen as the main strategies for affect regulation and are the manifestations of the habitual pattern of emotional regulation in the relationship between the child and the primary caregiver. A new perspective on unconscious fantasy is offered, in which fantasies are seen to be actively created as defensive narratives to protect the development of healthy narcissism and to become integrated into a person's internal working models. Archetypal defences are explored from a developmental perspective and some neurobiological issues relevant to defences are highlighted.

Selective processing of threatening information: effects of attachment representation and anxiety disorder on attention and memory.

To investigate the effect of the mental representation of attachment on information processing, 28 anxiety disorder outpatients, as diagnosed by the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule-Revised, were administered the Adult Attachment Interview and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. They also completed an emotional Stroop task with subliminal and supraliminal exposure conditions, a free recall memory task, and a recognition test. All tasks contained threatening, neutral, and positively valenced stimuli. A nonclinical comparison group of 56 participants completed the same measures. Results on the Stroop task showed color-naming interference for threatening words in the supraliminal condition only. Nonclinical participants with insecure attachment representations showed a global response inhibition to the Stroop task. Clinical participants with secure attachment representations showed the largest Stroop interference of the threatening words compared to the other groups. Results on the free recall task showed superior recall of all types of stimuli by participants with secure attachment representations. In the outpatient group, participants with secure attachment representations showed superior recall of threatening words on the free recall task, compared to insecure participants. Results on the recognition task showed no differences between attachment groups. We conclude that secure attachment representations are characterized by open communication about and processing of threatening information, leading to less defensive exclusion of negative material during the attentional stage of information processing and to better recall of threatening information in a later stage. Attachment insecurity, but not the type of insecurity, seems a decisive factor in attention and memory processes.

Cognitive analytic therapy: developing its theory and practice via attachment theory

Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) makes scant reference to Attachment Theory, despite many similarities. It is argued that the theoretical basis of CAT is not yet fully integrated, and that current attachment theory can contribute to CAT's thinking about motivation, the origin of procedures, the therapeutic relationship and abusive relationships. Attachment theory should influence CAT theory regarding developmental issues and reactions to loss; some suggestions are made for improved CAT practice. The ambiguous concept of ‘core’ in CAT is also clarified in terms of unassuaged attachment needs, with a distinction being made between ‘core pain’ and ‘core states’. Finally, consideration is given to a developmental research tool, the Adult Attachment Interview, as a means of determining different types of ‘defensive exclusion’ of information in psychopathology. There are preliminary indications that patients with predominantly dismissing or preoccupied attachment strategies might require somewhat different therapeutic processes in CAT. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Relations between early maltreatment and mental representations of relationships assessed with projective storytelling in middle childhood

AbstractChildren who participate in the Mother-Child Project, a longitudinal study of high-risk children, were giver projective storytelling task during their sixth-grade year. Story sets were coded for relationship themes like peer acceptance and problem solving, and responses were compared between groups identified based on pas maltreatment. The maltreatment group included 43 children who were identified as having been physically abused, sexually abused, or neglected or having psychologically unavailable care. A control group of 53 children from this high-risk sample was identified as having received adequate care. The remaining participants whose care was questionable were not included in this study. Based on quantitative analyses using a factor measuring relationship expectations and controlling for IQ and socioeconoraic status, the maltreate group told stories significantly more negative compared to the control group. Findings are introduced and discussed in terms of attachment theory and related work addressing the mental representations of maltreated children. In particular, it is proposed that, based on early maltreatment experiences, children acquire internal working models of themselves as unworthy and of others as unavailable. In subsequent relationship situations they would be constricted in cognitively processing events, have difficulty regulating their own emotions, an employ processes of defensive exclusion (e.g. projection, introjection, displacement, splitting, preoccupatioi idealization) to manage their distress feelings.

Updating paternal images in father‐adult son relationships

Abstract This paper uses sociological perspectives to review issues in parent‐adult child relationships, focusing on the parent‐adult son relationship. Based on attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988), it was expected that men's images of their fathers and their perceptions of their relationship with father would be updated, revised, or relatively unmodified since childhood. Men's reworking father images were traced and mediators or catalysts which seemed to precipitate or promote change in the men's views of their father identified. Examples of these mediators are presented along with vignettes from various father‐adult son relationships where paternal images have changed. The study suggests that a revised internal image of father is important for modifying generational relationships. As a securely attached child grows older and his parents treat him differently, a gradual up‐dating of models [parental images] occurs. In the case of the anxiously attached child, by contrast, this gradual updating of models is in some degree obstructed through defensive exclusion of discrepant experience and information.

Bereavement and personal constructs: old theories and new concepts.

This paper reviews several traditional and current theories regarding the nature of bereavement and argues that conceptualizing grieving in personal construct terms can clarify and extend existing work in this area. In particular, it is contended that a personal construct view of the importance of "core role" (self) structure helps explain Bowlby's theory of "defensive exclusion" of the reality of the death: because an individual's perceived relationship with a significant other helps define his or her core role, loss of the relationship through death directly challenges the most central dimensions of the bereaved person's construct system. Implications of this cognitive theory of bereavement are detailed, and several testable hypotheses are put forward.