To An Old Friend: Attachment

I ran into an older friend - he's almost 90 - I've known for almost 35 years.  He's moved out of town and only visits on occasions and we chatted briefly.  He's always been a man with great insight.  And thus it was unsurprising that he asked about my work.  "So, what kind of things do you find in your work?  What issues, what themes do you find with your clients?"

His question triggered a lot of thought as I've been wondering myself about that.  Carl Jung discussed the term "collective unconscious."  It's considered to be a part of what, unconsciously, connects us.  It has its almost mysterious aspects, as one wonders what we, all different people, might have unconsciously in common.  Yet we indeed do often have a sense that there are underlying themes of awareness that are shared among us, regardless of the disparate nature of our lives. 

In response to my old friend's question I popped off something from the top of my head.  But after a bit returned to his question.  I realized that what I've been seeing a lot of lately is a lack of the ability of people to connect, deeply, to one another.  John Bowlby wrote of "Attachment Theory" in response to his experience in England during WW II when he worked with children who had been separated from their families in the chaos of war.  He saw then that the primary aspect of a child's attachment to parents is a fundamental need for children's security, stability and mental health. 

The sources of the attachment issues I've seen are varied, but with some common themes.  The most profound is the damage done when children are abused or neglected.  Those are easily discerned, if troubling and difficult to treat.  And, of course screen time, video gaming and social media are a part of it.  They can provide a pseudo sense of attachment.  Emotional nourishment of a sort, but it falls shy of actual emotional connection and attachment.  It can mimic the aspects of what so many of us recall from childhood as the need to be "in" the group.  The latest Tweet or Instagram often replaces the sense of connected-ness we felt on the playground or in the school cafeteria.  If you're "in" you have that sense of security and validation that we crave as humans.  If not, well....you're just as "out" as when you were picked last for the neighborhood touch football game, or not included in the birthday party of the most popular kid.  Rejection is a horrible feeling, but one that is all but inevitable in the process of social growth.  So the rejection a child today endures when their smart phone or computer time is withheld by a parent as a consequence can almost doubly isolate.  Not only is the child cut off from their perceived source of connection, their device, they've endured that cut off at the hand of a parent, another source of rejection.  And while that might not be terribly different than the "grounding" that had the same effect a generation or so ago, somehow it seems different.  Kids "attachment" to their devices feels addictive, and we know what happens when we cut off an addict.

And the poor parents, what are they do to?  Screens have become so ubiquitous that they are the obvious and tempting target for consequences.  Yet despite parents' efforts to monitor or restrict kids' online activities, kids today are so computer savvy that they can often outwit parents' interventions with a few simple key strokes which creates an escalation in the war of control and a resultant decline in the child's sense of trust and connection to both friends and family.  It's a spiral that has no clear answer or resolution, (though the interested reader would be referred to Ross Greene's work on Collaborative Problem Solving discussed elsewhere in these blogs and on his website www.livesinthebalance.com.) 

And as if this weren't enough - the distraction of these same devices, screens, apps and alerts is a huge distraction to parents.  We've all seen the jokes reflecting the sadness of a parent (or kid) wanting, longing for the connection with their family member only to be sidelined by the trance of a device in another's sights.  Multitasking has all but become an expectation of modern life, a skill in which most of us have experience, sadly often to the detriment of actual concentration and focus, of attention and presence.

I've also seen the cost to marriages.  People who are so devoted to their devices that they literally do not have time for their spouse.  I remember the first time - long ago, it seems - when I was with someone who didn't automatically pick up a ringing phone (they used to ring.)  It was an amazing awareness - we're not obligated to obey the ring.  So too now.  We're not obligated to obey the alert.  Our obligation is to be present in the relationship we are in.  At the moment.  Now.  Kids need to learn that.  Our wives and husbands need to see and feel that.  We need it as well.  There's no greater foundation in a relationship than the attached intimacy that develops over time.  We can easily see attachment in the magic that occurs between newborn and child.  In the inches between an infant being fed and the parent, we look, we communicate.  We love.  We experience the closeness and beauty of connection and attachment. 

To my friend, this is what I've not been seeing lately, and what concerns me.  And yes, it's hard to connect and be intimate.  It makes us vulnerable, and vulnerability can lead to rejection and pain.  It demands greater effort at communication.  But that's a part of the process, part of what enables us to reach out and grow, to develop attachment.  It's a primary task that we have to master in order to succeed in this world.