Disturbed attachment and negative affective style. An intergenerational spiral

Abstract

The relationship between the quality of parents' attachment to their own parents and the quality of affective style was examined with a sample of 49 severely disturbed young adults and adolescents and their families receiving long-term in-patient treatment. Measures reflecting disturbances in attachment of parents to their own parents, derived from a five-minute speech sample task, were strongly associated with measures of negative affective style (e.g., criticism, intrusiveness and guilt induction) in face-to-face interactions with the disturbed offspring, as assessed through videotaped discussions of conflictual family issues after three months of treatment. The most significant findings involved the linkages between disturbances in the mother's attachment to her own mother and the degree of negative affect directed at the child patient. The association between disturbed intergenerational parental attachments and negative affective style supports the hypothesis that the parent's own internal burdens, stemming from disturbed attachment representations, particularly of the same-sex parent, may be a driving force behind the negative affect they display in interactions with their disturbed offspring.