Bethany Saltman - Strange Situation: A Mothers Journey Into the Science of Attachment

In this marvelous, important book, youll find a blend of clear, concise, and insightful summaries of the science of attachment woven beautifully with the essential inner journey of our intrepid guide, Bethany Saltman, who comes to make sense of her life during the course of writing the book. It is at once an intellectual and deeply personal account of our knowledge of attachment and its influence on human development. Our authors captivating approach and courage invite us to do exactly what attachment studies have powerfully demonstrated is a key aspect of attaining secure attachment at any age: reflecting on our past is how we develop more flexibility in our attention in the present and free ourselves to become who we want to be in the future. This mental time travel that links past, present, and future is how we make sense of the experiences of the past, the ways weve adapted to those events, and how we have been affected by our early relationships throughout our development.

The power of attachment theory and research, first formulated and organized by John Bowlby, MD, and Mary Ainsworth, PhD, is in their rigorous exploration of human development, their focus on empirical findings across cultures and across generations, and their continual updating of ideas as new scientific discoveries and techniques become available. When Bethany Saltman first contacted me to discuss this science over a decade ago, we discussed how she might learn more about attachment and make these academic findings accessible to a broader audience than the scholars and students who usually read these in-depth empirical reports. We discussed the insights of attachment research that revealed how we can have suboptimal attachment histories yet come to make sense of those challenging experiencesno matter how painfulas we integrate new insights into a way of being more present with our moment-to-moment experience internally and with our own children. This finding of learning or earning security is often surprising to those who hear it for the first time. Why, people often inquire, if the past is past and done and cannot be changed, would remembering those experiences, painful or not, be in any way helpful to the individual? The answer is quite simple yet profound. Yes, you cannot change the past. And, amazingly, yes, making sense of the past changes your relationship to those events and how they affect you, now and in the future. You can change how you are affected by the past. This making-sense process begins with knowing the nature of attachment, the ways memories become encoded and stored, and how these events influence our autobiographical narrativesthe stories of our lives, the ways we come to get a sense of who we are in the world, especially the interpersonal world.

All of this might sound somewhat abstract and dry. And this is both why and how the magic of this book can work its way into your own understanding of the broad field of attachment, and, if you are open to it, into your own way of making sense of your personal life history. Our minds have the capacity to process both factual knowledge and personal knowledge. Because these types of knowledge are mediated in different networks in the brain, you may find, as I did, that quite different sensations arise as our author moves between very smart discussions of the sciencejust enough for you to get a clear and detailed idea without being flooded by unnecessary facts that can later be obtained, as desired, by a review of the extensive endnotesand the compelling autobiographical journey she invites us to join her on as she weaves this research framework with her own personal reflections. Implicit in this tapestry of the scientific and the personal is a deeper, more compelling, and likely more effective way of acquiring insights into attachment at each of these levels of understanding.

In this book, youll learn about many aspect of our lives, including how the sensitivity of parents in response to the dependency of infants in the early years shapes how children learn to regulate their emotions and come to know their own mindsas well as the minds of othersand also shapes how children develop self-regulation, insight, and empathy. Youll become familiar with how research strategies utilizing the gold standard of the infant Strange Situation (an infant being in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people) are correlated with the parents own making-sense process as revealed in the Adult Attachment Interview. Youll come to know how these parent-shaped developmental experiences influence how children come to interact with their peers, their teachers, and even their romantic partners later in life. As you learn about these fascinating and important insights from science, youll also be given the privilege of following Bethany Saltmans personal reflections as a guide to the autobiographical reflection process the research shows is central to how we as parents can learn to be present with our childrento show up for them as we emotionally connect, keep them safe, and provide the interactive repair following ruptures that is the basis for their developing security in their attachment with us.

Our insightful guide goes even further in what she offers to us, the fortunate recipients of her decade-long journey to construct this book. Beyond her background in Buddhist meditation and her contact with teachers such as Jon Kabat-Zinn, Bethany Saltman reaches out to leaders in the field of attachment and becomes trained in both the Strange Situation and the Adult Attachment Interview, connecting with luminaries in the field such as Miriam and Howard Steele, Bob Marvin, and Alan Sroufe, and obtaining permission to dive into and cite the personal files of Mary Ainsworth. The direct input of these leaders in the field in the form of dialogue and email communication with our author is part of the books way of weaving the personal and the scientific into one powerful and dramatic tale.