A Dynamic-Maturation Model of Attachment

The Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment (DMM), created by Patrricia Crittenden, emphasized the dynamic interaction of the maturation of the human organism, across the lifespan. The DMM sought to further Bowlby’s attachment model and create more specific classifications of attachment styles. Crittenden founds that those with more neglectful parents were more likely to engage in aggressive/clingy behavior and those with abusive parents were more likely to engage in avoidant/compliant behavior.

DMM posits that attachment is a process by which individuals develop predictable ways of processing information based on both exposures to danger, and the process of life-long developmental maturation (Crittenden, 1999, 2000). As individuals progress in age and development, new dangers and tasks require the individual to adapt their method of information processing in order to generate new strategies for both self-protection and the assurance of reproductive availability.

“Strengths approach to trauma, as opposed to a illness approach” -Patricia Crittenden

Main thought: exposure to danger is an opportunity to learn essential information about survival.

” Every life has danger; we were evolved to survive it. Trauma is an event, and psychological trauma is one response to danger”. -Patricia Crittenden

Attachment is a developmental pathway that unfolds across the life-span not a set trajectory formed in infancy (Bowlby, 1973).

Maturation:

- Maturatal efforts are used to protect self, reproduce, and protect one’s progeny

- Maturation is neurological/mental/physical

- Maturation involves an increase in potential during childhood and adulthood

- Maturation is environment specific (family, school)

Psychodynamic theory recognizes that early attachments influence later relationships, development, ability to trust, self-worth, and other important life considerations.

Five central ideas underlie the DMM:

1. Patterns of attachment (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) are self-protective

strategies.

2. Self-protective strategies are learned in interaction with protective figures (attachment

figures, most often one’s parents).

3. Symptoms are functional aspects of dyadic strategy (e.g., acting out, inhibition) or

consequent to it (e.g., anxiety behaviors)

4. Strategies will change when they do not fit the context; symptoms of anxiety will

disappear when one is not anxious.

5. Therefore, the focus of treatment should be the fit of strategy to context to yield

maximum safety and comfort.

DMM assesses cognition and affect. Within A and C patterns, low numbers (1, 2, etc.) signify less distortion of information, while high numbers (7, 8, etc.) signify higher level of distortion and omission of other forms of information. As for B patterns, B1-2 represents a tendency towards a reliance on cognition, B3 indicates a true balance of information used, and B3-4 represents a tendency towards greater use of affect. Finally, letters and numbers in Type A/C notation represent the patterns of integrated, but distorted cognition (A) and affect (C) that are used in an alternating fashion. DMM has developed useful operationalized descriptions of common patterns of attachment behavior associated with reliance on and omission of certain types of information.

–Four basic attachment strategies rooted in developmentally-formed patterns of information processing:

Reliance on affect

An integrated and accurate use of both cognition and affect

Reliance on cognition

(A/C) Integrated but distorted use of both cognition and affect.

Horizontal axis: Type A: cognition Type C: Affect

Vertical axis: Top: Type C Accurate information

Bottom: Type A/C Distorted information

A1-2: Cognitive prediction in the context of very little threat. Qualities include, predictability and responsibility, with reliance on feelings of inhibition. First used in infancy.

A3: Reliance on predictable contingencies, protect self by protecting caregiver.

A4: Compulsively compliant, try to prevent danger, protect self by doing what caregiver asks of them. Qualities include, vigilant, agitated and anxious.

A5: Compulsively promiscuous to avoid genuine intimacy while maintaining human contact and desire. Qualities include, false positive affect and superficial social engagement to avoid deep attachment/involvement.

A6: Compulsively self-reliant. Individuals do not trust others to be predictable, finding others inadequate to meet demands. Qualities include, negative affect to protect self and withdrawn from social relationships.

A7-8: Delusional idealizing individuals with repeated experience of severe danger. Qualities include, brittle false positive affect and protect self by imagining that their powerless attachment figures will protect them.

B1-2: Individuals assigned B1-2 are more inhibited with regard to negative affect

B3: Inherently balanced, adapting to a wide variety of situations. Qualities include, self-protective of others, avoiding harm, and communicating directly.

B4-5: Individuals exaggerate negative affect and sentimental or irritated, but inherently balanced.

C1-2: Threatening and disarming. Qualities include, relying on one’s own feelings to guide behavior, using exaggerated affect to influence one's behavior.

C3-4: Aggressive-feigned helpless involves alternating aggression with apparent helplessness, causing others to comply out of fear of attack.

C5-6: Punitively obsessed with revenge and/or seductively obsessed with rescue. Qualities include, distorting information strategically, blaming others for predicament, and heightening own negative affect.

Infancy

B Attachment Style 0-3 Months

Sensitively Responsive Caregivers

Infant Teaches / Caregiver Leans

• When a baby cries the caregiver responds

• Baby learns that crying elicits a response

• Predictable and attuned care

• Generally safe and protected

B Attachment Style 3 Months +

Babies learn to wait! The waiting transforms the sad feeling of crying into excited anticipation of the caregiver’s predictable response

General Characteristics of B Attachment Style

• Baby learns to balance thoughts and feelings

• Baby received predictable and attuned care = optimal development

• Learn behavioral consequences

Goal: The parents mediate the effect of the context upon the infant, including risk to the infant.

A Attachment Style 0-3 Months

Infants learn their feelings cause nothing, irritate others, and cause others to laugh when they feel bad

• Caregivers are Predictably Unattuned

• Caregivers respond promptly but angrily

• Caregivers' response is prompt but not attune to the baby’s needs

• Generally safe and protected

A Attachment Style 3 Months

• Infant no longer displayed negative affect

• Similar to avoidant . dismissing

General Characteristics of A Attachment

· Babies as young as 2 months may learn to inhibit all displays of discomfort

· Inhibition of emotion may manifest in somatic ways

(digestive problems, sleep problems, breathing difficulties, skin rashes…)

· Babies learn to prioritize thoughts over feelings

C Attachment Style 0-3 Months

Predictably unpredictable “on a schedule of unpredictable, intermittent positive reinforcement of a negative affect” (Crittenden 2005).

· Caregiver responds to infants negative affect

o Sometimes promptly

o Sometimes after a delay

o Sometimes before infant signals

· Infant cannot predict the caregiver’s reaction therefore can have a negative affect for an extended period of time

· Not maltreated - just distressed for extended time

· Preoccupied / ambivalent

· Exaggerating emotions is necessary to gain attention

· Gains and holds attention with extreme demonstration of behavior

Preschool age

A3 Attachment Style: Compulsive Caregiving

· Inhibit negative affect and protect themselves by protecting their attachment figure.

o In childhood, they try to cheer up or care for sad, withdrawn, and vulnerable attachment figures.

o In adulthood, they often find employment where they rescue or care for others, especially those who appear weak and needy.

Goal: Learning safe forms of self-reliance for short periods of time.

A4 Attachment Style: Compulsive Compliance

· Try to prevent danger, by inhibiting negative affect to protect themselves by doing what attachment figures want them to do.

o Often in response to angry and threatening caregivers

o Excessively vigilant, quick to anticipate and meet others’ wishes

o Generally agitated and anxious,

§ Anxiety is ignored and downplayed by the individual, often appears as somatic symptoms that are brushed aside as being unimportant.

· Goal: Learning safe forms of self-reliance for short periods of time.

C3-4 Attachment Style: Aggression/Feigned Helplessness

• Involves alternating aggression with apparent helplessness to cause others to comply out of fear of attack or assist out of fear that one cannot care for oneself.

  • C3 strategy emphasizes anger in order to demand caregivers’ compliance.

    • elicits compliance and guilt in others

  • C4 Strategy Emphasizes giving signals of incompetence and submission

    • elicits need to “rescue” in others

Goal: Learning safe forms of self-reliance for short periods of time.

C5-6 Attachment Style: Punitive/Seductive

· More extreme form of C3-4 that involves active deception to carry out the revenge or elicit rescue.

· The outcome is a more enduring and less resolvable struggle

o Substantially distort information by blaming others for their predicament and heightening their own negative affect

o Individuals using C5 (Punitive) Approach are colder, more deceptive, and more distant than those using C3 approach

§ Dismiss other people’s perspectives while forcing others to attend to them

o Individuals using C6 Approach give the appearance of needing rescue from dangerous circumstances that are self-induced.

· Goal: Establishing symmetrical attachments with best friends while concurrently maintaining affiliative peer relationships.

Adolescent

B Attachment Style

• Balanced

• Secure

• Predictable

• Recognize (and utilize) distortion

• Well prepared to give and receive care

Of Note:

B 1-2 reserved

B 3 comfortable

B 4-5 reactive

• Adolescence is a period of dramatic change in attachment

• Relationships are more complex

• Self-protective strategies are more complex

• Relationship with caregiver is reduced

• Sexual arousal allows for new means ot achieving comfort

· Goal: Transforming best friend attachments into romantic, reciprocal attachments with a sexual component.

A Attachment Style

• May become socially or sexually promiscuous

• Comfort without risk of closeness

• May prefer isolation and self reliance

• Fearful of showing vulnerability

• May take comfort in delusionally idealized figures

May withdraw from close relationships and become compulsively promiscuous - strangers feel safer than those they are close to

C Attachment Style

• Vengeful behavior

• Anger and menace toward whole groups

• Victimized

• Deceitful

• Fearful and vulnerable

• Focused on self

Exposure to danger, and lack of comfort lead to the development of the most complex C

Adulthood

Goals:

1. Establish symmetrical and reciprocal spousal attachments that foster both partner’s development.

2. Establishing a non-reciprocal nurturing relationship for children.

3. Establishing non-symmetrical attachment relationships in which the adult is the attachment figure.

References

Bowlby, J. (1973). Separation: Anxiety and Anger (1st edition). New York, NY: Basic Books.

Crittenden, P. M. (2005). Attachment Theory, Psychopathology, and Psychotherapy: The Dynamic-Maturational Approach. Attachment, mental health, adaptation, integrative treatment, Adult IASA. Retrieved July 12, 2022, from https://www.iasa-dmm.org/

Crittenden, Patricia. (1992). Children's strategies for coping with adverse home environments: An interpretation using attachment theory. Child abuse & neglect. 16. 329-43. 10.1016/0145-2134(92)90043-Q.

Crittenden, P. (2015). Dynamic maturational perspective. YouTube. Retrieved June 29, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgEbgXNNmb8

Crittenden, P. (2020). DMM model. Family Relations Institute. Retrieved June 29, 2022, from https://familyrelationsinstitute.org/dmm-model/

Crittenden, Patricia. (2017). Gifts from Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 22. 436-442. 10.1177/1359104517716214.

Crittenden, P. (2021). TU97: The Dynamic Maturational Model (DMM) of attachment with guest Patricia Crittenden (part 2). Therapist Uncensored. Retrieved June 29, 2022, from https://therapistuncensored.com/episodes/tu97-the-dynamic-maturational-model-dmm-of-attachment-with-guest-patricia-crittenden-part-2/