ABSTRACT

In response to Cornerstones of attachment research and the target articles, I reflect on three questions. First, what is “attachment”? Although a natural kind, I argue against an essentialist understanding (i.e. in terms of necessary/sufficient conditions for class membership). Instead, the attachment concept must be allowed to have fuzzy boundaries, partly because of how attachments transform in both phylogeny and ontogeny. Second, how to think about the normative (species-typical) features of the theory vis-à-vis dyadic/individual differences in attachment? Whereas the former are foundational, I argue that the latter largely reflect surface variation. Despite this, the lion’s share of attachment research has horned in on variation and its measurement, to some detriment to the theory’s potential and applications. Finally, what is encouraging and discouraging about recent developments? While applauding large-scale cooperative endeavors (e.g. individual participant meta-analyses, consensus statements) I caution the field not to lose sight of the value of smaller-scale, creative explorations of uncharted territories.

摘要

针对依恋研究的基石和目标文章，我反思了三个问题。首先，什么是“依恋”？虽然是一种自然的类型，但我反对本质主义的理解（即在类成员资格的必要/充分条件方面）。相反，必须允许依恋概念具有模糊的界限，部分原因是依恋在系统发育和个体发育中是如何转变的。其次，如何看待理论的规范（物种典型）特征与依恋的二元/个体差异？前者是基础性的，我认为后者在很大程度上反映了表面变化。尽管如此，依恋研究的大部分都集中在变异及其测量上，这对理论的潜力和应用造成了一定的损害。最后，最近的事态发展有哪些令人鼓舞和令人沮丧的地方？在赞扬大规模合作努力的同时（例如