![Strange Situation](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
![Strange Situation](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
![](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
![](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
Strange Situation
a mother's journey into the science of attachment
-
- 13,99 €
-
- 13,99 €
Περιγραφή εκδότη
A full-scale investigation of the controversial and often misunderstood science of attachment theory, inspired by the author’s own experience as a parent and daughter.
When award-winning editor, writer, researcher, and longtime Zen student Bethany Saltman gave birth to her daughter, Azalea, she felt like there was something ‘off’ about her experience. She knew she loved her daughter, but would oftentimes be angry, short on patience, even unkind. She went in search of the reasons why, and how to better understand herself, her daughter, and their relationship.
Saltman launched a broad inquiry into the science of attachment, a field of developmental psychology that answers the question of why — from an evolutionary point of view — love exists between parents and children. Specifically, she focused on the data from a famous laboratory procedure, the ‘Strange Situation’, used around the world by scientists as the gold standard for measuring attachment security. What Saltman found by studying the Strange Situation is that love is unbreakable. Each and every one of us — including her — is built for it.
In this intimate, rigorous, and deeply personal rendering, Saltman discovers that while our behaviour as parents is important, what matters most is the way we think about our attachments, transmitted mind to mind from generation to generation. This is excellent news. After all, as Saltman’s decades of Zen practice tell her and her readers, the one thing completely within our power to change is our minds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Saltman, a journalist and researcher, debuts with a fascinating deep dive into attachment theory. Her interest in the subject began as she struggled with mixed emotions toward motherhood, worrying that in part because of her own upbringing by a cold and distant mother she hadn't formed the "secure attachment" to her young daughter described in parenting literature. Saltman's quest to understand the theory leads her to its formative figure, psychologist Mary Ainsworth. In the early 1950s, Ainsworth began extending and developing the theories of John Bowlby, then an outlier in psychology who, in placing the mother-baby bond at the core of infant development, went against the prevailing "cupboard theory" of behaviorism, which held that infants simply attached to the person who fed them. Saltman, bolstered by her research, provides clear explanations of attachment theory, in particular Ainsworth's cornerstone testing tool, the Strange Situation, where infants' attachment styles are determined as they interact with their mothers in different situations, such as breast-feeding and co-sleeping. Readers will learn along with the author what creates a solid attachment between caregiver and child, how attachment styles manifest in adulthood, and what constitutes "the telltale heart of attachment." Carefully researched and with copious endnotes, this is an excellent resource for anyone interested in child development. Meg Thompson, Thompson Literary.