In defense of unresolved attachment: re-modelling intergenerational transmission of attachment.

Abstract

Intergenerational transmission of attachment is one of the core hypotheses of attachment theory. How parents or other caregivers look back on their childhood attachment experiences is suggested to shape their infants' attachments. In the current paper, we show that a new twist to correspondence analysis (Canonical Correlation Analysis [CCA]) of cross-tabulated attachment classifications with oblique rotation Correspondence Analysis (CA) may uncover the latent structure of intergenerational transmission showing the unique role of parental Unresolved representations in predicting infant Disorganized attachments. Our model of intergenerational transmission of attachment supports predicted associations between parental and infant attachments. Despite growing skepticism about the validity of parental Unresolved trauma and infant Disorganized attachment, we come to an evidence-based statistical defense of these generative clinical components of attachment theory awaiting a substantive experimentum crucis.