Lovenheim explains at Club book event how our early attachment styles shape our lives

Author and journalist Peter Lovenheim told a National Press Club audience Thursday that attachment is “the actual source of how we connect, the true heart.”

Lovenheim was the guest at a Headliners book event to discuss his latest work, “The Attachment Effect: Exploring the Powerful Ways Our Earliest Bond Shapes Our Relationships and Lives.”

Seven years earlier, he discovered “attachment theory” in his younger daughter’s dorm room, leafing through texts from her psychology class. From there he began a years-long odyssey of self-discovery that led to this latest book.

“Connections are what all my books are about,” he said.

In introducing him, Club President Andrea Edney spoke of Lovenheim’s “deeply personal journey” to understand how early attachment affects all our lives. He was here, she said, “to help us understand our own relationships styles” and "how we interact with the rest of the world."

Attachment theory is based on the premise that because we are born helpless, we are hard-wired at birth to seek out and attach to a reliable and competent care-giver for protection.

The success or failure of this search and attachment shapes our developing brain and affects our relationships throughout life. It was developed by John Bowldy, a 20th Century British psychotherapist whose groundbreaking work is a foundational theory in child development and social psychology.

When Lovenheim could find no book for the general reader that explores attachment (or the lack of it) with adults, he wrote one.

But the big challenge, he said, was how to convey information from so many complex fields like evolutionary development and social psychology. Part of the answer, he found, was to tell a lot of stories “including my own.”

Fascinated by Bowlby’s theory, he asked Harry Reis, a professor at the University of Rochester, if he could sit in on his class to learn more about attachment.

Over coffee with Reis, a woman at the next table interrupted to say, “I’d pay to sit at your table,” noting that what they were discussing felt right to her.

That’s when Lovenheim knew he had a book. It features extensive interviews, including one with former governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.

An estimated 55 percent of the U.S. adult population has a secure attachment style while the remainder fall into three insecure styles: insecure-avoidant (25 percent), insecure-anxious (15 percent) and disorganized (5 percent).

How can a parent develop secure attachment in a child?

“Consistency is key,” he said. “Some responsible adult needs to be a consistent presence.”

So is “Attunement,” which is about paying attention.

“We need to learn to correctly read our child’s signals,” he said, citing a child’s cries. Are they about hunger, being tired, “I’m fine, just want to keep playing” or “I’m terrified!”?

Lovenheim cites research that shows a mix of attachment styles improves a workplace.

“It’s a whole new spin on diversity in the workplace,” he said.

As one communication example, someone with an avoidant attachment style is unlikely to disclose personal information in casual conversations while a person with an anxious style tends to over-disclose.

He told the audience not to worry if they test out as “avoidant” or “anxious” because experiments show that both styles have strengths, giving examples of how the latter can act as sentinels in threatening situations and the former as “first responders."

In a clever experiment where test subjects were exposed to what appeared to be a threatening situation when smoke filled a room, people high in anxiety attachment, who are especially sensitive to threats, were the first to notice the danger. Those highest in avoidance attachment, who prize independence and self-reliance, were the first to find a safe way out, Lovenheim explained.

Children with a “disorganized” attachment style, often a result of extreme neglect, trauma or abuse, can improve dramatically with direct intervention, such as weekly therapist visits to the family home.

“As a country, we should be aiming more tax dollars at these programs,” Lovenheim said. The costs are high but the results for our families and communities are enormous.

People can change their attachment style — what researchers call “earned secure attachment.” It can be done through a strong mentor outside the immediate family, a coach, therapy — sometimes years of deep reflection -- or with the help of a romantic partner, parent or sibling.

The Club audience included many academics, researchers and psychiatrists, including Drs. Jude Cassidy, Phillip Shaver, who Lovenheim described as “the dean of attachment research” and who spoke briefly to praise the book, Amitai Etzioni and Mauricio Cortina.