A common misconception is thatof "Disordered Attachment", or"Reactive Attachment Disorder",in which attachment is seen tohave become inherently disordered,or psychopathological.There are two ways to understandthis misunderstanding.The first is that attachment becomesconflated with psychopathology,such that emotional distress andbehavioural problemsare understood as attachment.This is problematic, because it requiresattachment to be a single entity,but we have already seen, how overtime, the attachment system maturesinto an elaborate network ofmulti-directional systems.If attachment itself is disordered,this implies a multi-system breakdown.The second way to explain disorderedattachment is to think of attachment asexclusively causal in psychopathology.Bearing in mind that attachmentis an evolutionary system, and thereforeinherently adaptive to ensure survival,it seems counter-intuitivethat attachment couldactually cause disorder.Nonetheless, research shows thatpeople with an insecure attachment styleare overrepresented inthe clinical population,and children with disorganizedattachment styles,are at high risk of showingbehavioural problems in childhood.So, does attachment cause psychopathology?The problem lies in ourattribution of causality,as this assumes a one-directionalrelationship between attachment andpsychopathology, and the primary, oreven unique role that attachment has.Nothing in psychology is ever this simple,as we will now see with this.So here we have attachment andpsychopathology andthe relationship between the two of them.First of all, we have biological factors,including genetic andprenatal factors such as injury,maternal alcohol use,smoking, or drug use.Then we have trauma and abuse,which might be physical, sexual, oremotional abuse, domestic violence,severe neglect, or major loss.We also have to consider the parents'

own experience of being parented andthe trauma, abuse, loss, orpositive experiences they may have had.The parenting stylemight be authoritarian,authoritative, permissive.Reciprocity andautonomy are also important as well theiravailability in communication style.The infants personality or temperamentis also significant.This includes their thinking style,their mood, their preferences,their interpersonal functioning.And the unique x factor thatmakes them just themselves.And then we have the other directinfluences on psychopathology,such as IQ or learning.This might involve thingslike a global learning orintellectual disability, or specificlearning difficulties like dyslexia, orsimply access toeducational opportunities.Poverty provides a verysignificant chronic stressor andis usually accompanied byhaving fewer resources.Contextual factors are alsoimportant in the development of psychopathology,in terms of somebody being inthe right place at the right time.Age and stage can also influencethe development of psychopathology.The adolescent period can bea particular risk factor, butthroughout childhood transition pointspresent moments when children might bemore vulnerable todeveloping difficulties.Gender can also be a factor,with boys more at risk of behaviouralproblems during childhood.Girls more at risk of internalizingproblems during adolescence.And life events across the age spanare a risk factor for psychopathology.And we need to consider both chronicstressors and one-off traumatic events.Therefore, we can see that therelationship between these variables iscomplicated, with some variables,like biology,trauma and abuse affecting attachment andpsychopathology directly.Parenting history hasa direct influence on boththe developing attachment relationship andon parenting style.

Parenting style willinfluence personality andtemperament and is also influencedby personality and temperament.Parenting style has a directrelationship with attachment andpersonality temperament will also havea direct relationship with attachment.These both also have a directrelationship with psychopathology.And finally,all those additional variables that alsoincrease the risk of psychopathology.Once we look the relationshipbetween all of these variables, andknowing that this is not a comprehensiveset of variables that we look at here,the direct relationshipbetween attachment andpsychopathology becomes much weaker andmuch more difficult to predict.Therefore, there is a relationshipbetween attachment andpsychopathology, butthe relationship is complicated by allthe different variables thatinteract with attachment, andall the variables that contribute tothe development of psychopathology.Furthermore, this diagram just imaginesthe relationship at one moment in time,and positions attachmentas a single entity.Developmentally, the presenceof psychopathology along withother developmental and non-developmentalfactors will influence different aspectsof the attachment system, changing orreinforcing different elements of it.So, the relationship between attachmentand psychopathology is at leastbi-directional, not causal, and attachmentis not the sole cause of psychopathology.This complicated relationship explainsa number of curious findings aboutattachment and psychopathology,which is explored in more depth in weekfive, but also highlights the risks oflabelling emotional distress,interpersonal difficulties, andbehavioural problems, and the variousfactors implicated in their onset andmaintenance as, simply"disordered attachment".Instead, attachment is best understoodas a normative developmentallysensitive system,designed to ensure the continuationof our species andthe individual through adaptation

based on prior learning.This week I have introducedyou to attachment theory,one of the most importanttheories of child development.We have seen its origins andexplored its current debates.Hopefully, you have been ableto see that attachment isfundamentally an evolutionary process,something that occurs in all humans andis a normal andadaptive process that ensures survival andpsychosocial functioningirrespective of whether emergingattachment styles are secure or insecure.Thank you.