We have shown (see my Controversial Aspects of Attachment Theory) Bowlby's inner theoretical contradictions and heavy compromises with psychoanalytic theory pervade his work weakening its very bases, rendering it poor and sterile, and precluding growth of knowledge as regards the socio-emotional approach seemingly so promising, and thus disappointing those of us who had laid hopes on the Attachment Theory field of enquiry.

ECLECTICISM'S WOES
 

If we further proceed with our quest, we come across other serious drawbacks, albeit of a different nature. Eclecticism, for instance, hailed as an attachment theory cornerstone as regards its inception, clearly becomes a stumbling block when used indiscriminately. When a research study is designed ethologically, such as Mary Aisworth's strange situation, the conclusions of the study should obtain in ethological terms, not in psychological terms. In other words, when you use ethologically-determined language as it were psychological language, you should produce the intermediate links which transform one into the other, otherwise noise obtains, and the reader gets confused. Mary Ainsworth's SS is a typical ethological lab experiment which does but corroborate what Bowlby theoretically predicted when he explains the ethological mechanisms underlying attachment: attachment behaviour will be activated in the face of unavailability of the attachment figure, that is when mother leaves, and will be deactivated when she returns (when the attachment figure becomes available again). As simple as that.
What makes Ainsworth infer "attachment patterns" or "attachment styles" from certain anomalies she finds in her experiment, when we all know that anomalies or  findings should be researched, not used as pre-conceived conclusions? Probably the need to solve the emotionality problem once and for all. Perhaps out sheer prejudice, who knows? What she ought to have done, and what we would still have to do is examine, study, empirically research, focus on attachment anomalies. If conditions obtained (see later why I assert present social conditions are far from the best to undertake such kind of research) what I would like to study is different kinds of anomalies and try to come up with a theory that explains individual differences, so as to open up gamut of ever-expanding types of affectional bonds or attachment bonds, or whatever one chooses to call them

When you use a pre-conceived idea to design an empirical research study, not only are you to blame for your eclecticism but also for your lack of scientific rigour. The continuity program whereby patterns of attachment or attachment styles endure throughout life encases the individual in a very, very stringent jacket, turning us poor mortals into a very small number of prototypes which replicate one another in a world of curious uniformity. This, as you are surely aware, is an benevolent way to put it, so as not to state that to divide humanity into a few fundamental attachment styles is plainly in contradiction with human condition, its diversity and its unpredictability. In other words it is sheer nonsense. It reminds me of the Panglossian Paradigm of the Adaptationists (Gould & Lewontin, 1978). Every conceivable behaviour at any age during lifespan can be construed as due to one's having a determined attachment pattern or harbouring a certain attachment style. Moreover, the said behaviours seem to be there to wear the attachment style. Just as Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss in Candide. Or it might be fairer to say the Wellsian paradigm of the Time Machine. Ever since Freud, psychoanalysts seem to have been bedazzled by the idea of travelling through time, back and forth. Attachment Theorists are no exception.

In a truly Cartesian vein they seem to believe our "psychic apparatus" is inhabited by a ghost, as Gilbert Ryle so pungently pointed out, or by many as Selma Fraiberg put it in a paper I never understood why it made its way into attachment theory, as it does away with one of its tenets, namely, it betrays the concept of environmentalism. "Ghosts in the Nursery" does all but that. It shows how old, pathological patterns of attachment have travelled in the time machine to our present time, take over the mother-infant situation and do but repeat, in perfect accord with Freud's compulsion to repetition, the old, neurotic interaction.

CLINICAL ECLECTICISM
 

Some clinicians (E.g., Mario Marrone, 1998) seem to believe that by yoking together Bowlby's attachment findings and classical psychoanalysis a humane hybrid emerges: the warm, personally related psychoanalyst, in sharp contrast with the cold, detached Freudian counterpart. According to Marrone, those who read and understood Bowlby in depth and have a training in psychoanalysis are better equipped to engage in a humane psychoanalytic process whereby the patient may use his analyst as a secure base to venture into the intricacies of his memories, fantasies, emotions and current and past significant relationships. Marrone follows Bowlby when he states that the analyst should become a secure base for the patient, instead of telling us how on earth can an analyst become so trustworthy for a patient as to take him as a secure base from which to explore the world.

REFERENCES

Bowlby, John (1958) The Nature of The Child's Tie to His Mother, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 39, 350-73.

Bowlby, John (1960a) Separation Anxiety, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 41, 89-113.

Bowlby, John (1960b) Grief and Mourning in Infancy and Early Childhood. Psychoanalytic Study of The Child, 15, 9-52.

Bowlby, John (1969, 1982) Attachment and Loss, vol. 1: Attachment. London: The Hogarth Press.

Bowlby, John (1973), Attachment and Loss, vol. 2: Separation. London: The Hogarth Press.

Freud, Sigmund (1938) An Outline of Psychoanalysis, Standard Edition, 23, pp. 163-4.

Garelli, JC (1989) Critique of Psychoanalytic Reason. (In Spanish: Critica de la Razon Psicoanalitica. Buenos Aires: Troquel).

Marrone, Mario (1998). Attachment and Interaction. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Rapaport and Gill (1959) Beyond Metapsychology, New York:  Psychological Issues

Ryle, Gilbert (1963), The Concept of Mind. New York: Barnes and Noble

Fraiberg, Selma, et. al. (1974) "Ghosts in the Nursery". Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 14, 387-421.