Absence of Attachment Representations (AAR) in the adult years: The emergence of a new AAI classification in catastrophically traumatized Holocaust child survivors

Abstract

In the present study we present a new and rare type of discourse in the AAI which is characterized by absence of attachment representations during adulthood. Forty-eight women, who as children lost both parents as a result of the Holocaust, were administered the AAI in their late adulthood. Two cases in this sample could not be assigned to any of the traditional AAI classification system (F, Ds, E, CC), mainly because they were unable to associate themselves with any significant attachment figure throughout their life. We raise the possibility that some devastating experiences during childhood might cause an unrecoverable crash in already established patterns of attachment to an extent that adulthood will be characterized by state of mind that bears no emotional tie to even a single attachment figure. We illustrate this state of mind by presenting the life history as well as quotations from the AAI of two women, and we discuss the possibility of a new AAI classification, namely Absence of Attachment Representations--AAR. The possible effects of the AAR classification on parental caregiving behaviors are discussed.

Emerging criteria for the low-coherence cannot classify category

“…This rough estimate, which has been placed in parentheses (see Table 2), might be indicative of the speaker's difficulty (or inability) to access early episodic memories, which prevents the development of defined attachment representations. Similarities can be observed in the study by Koren-Karie et al (2003) regarding the assignation of a new AAI classification (i.e. AAR) to two cases in which childhood experiences were unable to be inferred from the transcript, thus resulting in a "cannot rate" scoring for each scale.…”

“…Therefore, research has begun to highlight the importance of the CC category for specific clinical populations such as suicidal or obsessive-compulsive disorder adolescents (Adam, Sheldon-Keller, & West, 1995, 1996Ivarsson, 2008), homeless adolescents (Taylor-Seehafer, Jacobvitz, & Holleran Steiker, 2008), victims of (child) sexual abuse (Stalker & Davies, 1998;van Hoof, van Lang, Speekenbrink, van IJzendoorn, & Vermeiren, 2015), marital violent men and criminal offenders (Babcock, Jacobson, Gottman, & Yerington, 2000;Holtzworth-Munroe, Stuart, & Hutchinson, 1997;van IJzendoorn et al, 1997), and adults with dissociative disorders (Farina et al, 2014). Moreover, individuals with particularly extreme and traumatic attachment experiences, such as Holocaust child survivors (Koren-Karie, Sagi-Schwartz, & Joels, 2003) and adolescents with reactive attachment disorders (Goldwyn & Hugh-Jones, 2011), seem to share difficulties in the representation of attachment experiences and low-coherence narratives. In most of these populations, a more thorough understanding of the CC category could be helpful in understanding the consequences and effects of traumatic, disrupted, or disorganized attachments in childhood.…”

“…It can also indicate the challenges to both interviewers and coders, especially when subjects have suffered adversity and deprivation in their early years. It has been suggested (Koren-Karie et al, 2003) that the current coding system might require specific descriptors in regard to the populations exposed to particular traumatic experiences. More specifically, individuals who have experienced multiple caregiving contexts, the absence of attachment figures, and/or extreme traumatic ruptures in the attachment system may present transcripts characterized by a pervasive collapse of reasoning and discourse, thus straining the traditional AAI classification system to grasp their peculiar attachment state of mind.…”

“…In an attempt to address coding difficulties arising from these transcripts, several authors have proposed alternative criteria that can help identify these specific states of mind with respect to attachment. These attempts have followed two different directions: in one case, the authors have proposed alternative systems (Crittenden, 1997;Lyons-Ruth, Yellin, Melnick, & Atwood, 2005), and in the other, the authors have extended the original criteria to adapt them to the new difficulties emerged from clinical populations (Goldwyn & Hugh-Jones, 2011;Hesse, 1996;Koren-Karie et al, 2003;Turton et al, 2001). An alternative coding system was first proposed by Crittenden (1997) with the use of many more AAI categories.…”

“…a further dismissing category 'not attached' might be more apt than simply 'restricted in feeling' (Ds3)" (p.293). In a comparable manner, Koren-Karie et al (2003) proposed a newly emerging category titled, "Absence of Attachment Representations" (AAR). Characterized by specific markers, this category indicates a collapse in the representational foundations of the attachment system, especially when individuals face extremely traumatic experiences for extended periods during childhood or adolescence.…”