Intergenerational relations of attachment, including adult state of mind, adult care giving quality, and infant behavior, were examined in urban and rural samples. The sample included 66 dyads of contrasting populations, 35 middle-high urban Spanish speaking families and 31 rural Indian peasant families. Measures included the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985 /1996), home observations of mother-infant, and the Strange Situation attachment assessment (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978 ). Reliability among independent coders of Spanish AAI transcripts was established for the first time. Moreover, significant relations among the instruments were found, supporting the validity of the AAI to predict infant's attachment classifications and mothers sensitive care of their infants across cultures. Results further supported the cross-cultural robustness of core features of attachment theory and, to some extent, the pathway from adult state of mind through responsive care to attachment security.
We present a study of 40 youngsters who live and work in the streets of Mexico City and who have abandoned their homes for significant periods of time. They seek out their own means of survival from a very young age. In many cases they have children of their own already as teenagers. The Seminario de Sociopsicoanálisis was invited to take part in a project aimed at facilitating the access of these children to graphic arts, artistic creation and therapeutic listening.This article presents our principal findings of the children's everyday life conditions, their work and their dreams, based on data obtained from social character questionnaires -with which therapeutic intervention in this project began. Vignettes of two case studies are also presented.The interviews were complemented by data gathered in weekly sessions attended by the youngsters on a voluntary bases. The sessions attested to both the narcissistic, aggressive impulsiveness of these youngsters and the vital effort they make toward their own recovery and toward establishing affective emotional ties with instructors and therapists.We found that socio-psychoanalytic methods could be used successfully to expand the scope of psychoanalytic theoretic postulates about character to a non-clinical, disadvantaged population. By analyzing the content of the psychoanalytically guided interviews we were able to recognize the central, distinctive motive, which leads these youngsters to run away from home and forge their own sense of identity.
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