Attachment and Health
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth developed attachment theory in the 1960s while investigating the effects of maternal separation on infant development. The development of the Strange Situation task in 1965 by Ainsworth and Wittig allowed researchers to systematically investigate the attachment system operating between children and their parents. The Strange Situation involves separating infant-parent dyads and observing infant behaviours upon reunion. Infant behaviour tended to follow patterns, leading to the development of three attachment categories: Secure, Anxious-Avoidant, and Anxious-Resistant. In 1990, Ainsworth added a new category, championed by Mary Main, called Disorganized/Disoriented attachment, characterized by its less reliable pattern of behaviour.
Robert Rocco Cottone
Traditional counseling approaches are based on philosophies that attend to the individual experiencing emotional distress. This emphasis dates back to Freud, who defined an individual "psyche"—an internal non-physical aspect of self that is the framework for dealing with conflicts within the personality. Subsequent approaches to mental health primarily addressed individual problems as originating inside the person. Cottone's contribution to counseling and psychotherapy, along with other social theorists, was to apply relationship theory (focusing on interaction between people) to processes that were previously viewed as largely non-relational or individual. This was first accomplished in the field of vocational rehabilitation in the 1970s and 1980s with his "systemic theory of vocational rehabilitation". Until that time, vocational rehabilitation was viewed primarily as a psychological or medical program. He essentially developed a fully social model of vocational rehabilitation, meaning that individuals with disabilities are helped to fit within healthy and supportive relationship contexts (families, communities, cultures) rather than screened in or out of a rehabilitation program presumably on psychological traits or abilities. Cottone later developed a "paradigm" framework for counseling and psychotherapy, a theory about counseling theories that emphasized that all counseling is a relationship between a client (or clients) and a counselor. He argued that regardless of the treatment philosophy (which he classified broadly as the organic-medical, psychological, systemic-relational, and social constructivism paradigms) a crucial element of counseling is the social process of consensualizing (coming to agreement about the nature of problems and the nature of solutions). At the turn of the century he developed a social constructivism model of decision making, which is a fully relational model. By his model, decisions are made in the interpersonal processes of negotiating, consensualizing, and arbitrating (rather than an individual making a decision in his or her head). His most recent effort has been to apply relationship theory to the study of religion. He developed a relational philosophy of religion, providing a postmodern definition of belief: "acting with others as if some socially defined concept represents truth." Accordingly, religious truths are imbedded within communities of believers and not as external universal truths. His most compelling concept is a "bracketed absolute truth," or a "consensuality." A bracketed absolute truth is unquestionably true to people in a community (e.g., a religious community or a group of mental health professionals), but to people outside of the community, the group's truth looks relative. He used the example of the Heaven's Gate community, a religious group that committed mass suicide apparently without coercion. The group members believed an alien spaceship followed the Hale-Bopp comet and was to clear the earth of humanity (recycling). They committed suicide apparently so their spirits could rise up to the alien spaceship and escape the onslaught. Cottone argued that the ideals of Heaven's Gate were bracketed absolute truths, which were powerful in affecting the behavior of adherents to the degree that group members took their lives in deference to "truths" that looked ridiculous to outsiders. The idea of bracketed absolute truth (consensuality) explains how communities of believers (whether religious or not) hold fast to doctrine for better or for worse. Finally, Cottone attempted to unite science and religion through relationship theory. He defined science not as a process of establishing objective universal truths, but rather as a social process that reflects the culture, traditions, and definitions of groups of scientists who (together) establish consensualities about how to practice science. Science, consequently, is viewed as a process of relationships, as people come to believe together in the methods of defining scientific truths. Therefore, science (physical or social), religion, or any belief system, is viewed as a result of interpersonal interaction. Science and religion are thereby united at a high theoretical level as representing bracketed absolute truths.