Attachment

Attachment, the early experience of forming close emotional bonds with others, is a basic human drive that has a huge impact on our relationships in adult life.  In this article Mike Johnson explains how our experience of attachment is established in childhood through relationships with care-givers.  Future articles will explore what can happen when attachment is disrupted.

Children instinctively attempt to form an emotional attachment to their main care-givers. This vital task is undertaken during a process of rapid, though ‘one-sided’ brain development.

All children’s early lives are essentially a kaleidoscope of feelings, images and sensations. These vivid responses to the world are possible from birth because the right hemisphere of the brain is already functional. And so it is the right brain that is involved in attachment.