Bowlby's Secure Base Theory and the Social/ Personality Psychology of Attachment Styles: Work(s) in Progress A Commentary on Shaver & Mikulincer’s Attachment-related Psychodynamics

John Bowlby's goal in developing modern attachment theory was to preserve what he considered some of Freud's most valuable insights about human development and close relationships. First among these were insights into the importance of early experience and the notion that infant-mother and adult-adult relationships are similar in kind. Focussing on prospective and observational methods, Bowlby replaced Freud's drive reduction model of relationship motivation with one that emphasized the role relationships play in support of exploration and competence. He also introduced concepts from control systems theory to highlight and account for the complex monitoring of internal states, relationship experience, and context that shapes proximity seeking, communication across a distance, and exploration away from attachment figures. And where Freud had explained the effects of early experience in terms of psychodynamic structures, Bowlby introduced the concept of mental models. These cognitive constructs are thought to reflect ordinary experience as well as trauma, to tend toward stability, and to remain open to new information.