Mary Ainsworth

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Mary Dinsmore Salter Ainsworth (born December 1, 1913 in Glendale, Ohio , † March 21, 1999 in Charlottesville , Virginia ) was an American - Canadian developmental psychologist and with John Bowlby and James Robertson main proponent of attachment theory .

Life

Mary Salter was born the eldest of three sisters into an academic family; both parents had a doctorate and attached great importance to an extensive humanities education. The book Character and the Conduct of Life by William McDougall made the 15-year-old want to become a psychologist.

Mary Salter began her psychology studies at the University of Toronto in 1929 , received her MA in 1936, and received her PhD in 1939. She then worked there as a lecturer for several years . In 1942 she enlisted in the Canadian Army , where she achieved the rank of major. After completing her military service, she returned to Toronto, where she continued to teach personality psychology and conduct research in the same area. From 1945 to 1946 she worked as Superintendent of Women's Rehabilitation in the Department of Veteran Affairs in Ottawa and from 1945 to 1950 as Assistant Professor and Research Fellow at the Institute of Child Study at the University of Toronto.

In 1950 she married Leonard Ainsworth and accompanied him to London so that he could finish his studies at University College . In the same year she took up a position as Senior Research Psychologist in the research group led by John Bowlby at the Tavistock Clinic , which investigated the influence of the separation of mother and child on child development. One result of this study was that a comparative analysis would first have to research the healthy mother-child relationship . When Leonhard Ainsworth was offered a position at the East African Institute of Social Research in Uganda , Mary Ainsworth traveled with him in 1954 and, as a Senior Research Fellow at Makrere College in Kampala, carried out a field research project on the exemplary mother-child relationships among the Ganda people , which she described in her book Infancy in Uganda . In 1956 the Ainsworth couple moved to Baltimore, where Mary taught psychology at the Johns Hopkins University , from 1958 as an assistant professor and from 1963 to 1975 as a full professor. From 1957 to 1984 she taught psychology at the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia , from 1975 as professor, from 1976 as Commonwealth professor and from 1984 as professor emeritus. In 1992 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

After her divorce from Leonhard in 1962, she continued her studies on mother-child bonding , examining the interactions between mothers and children under natural conditions. In this context, she regularly visited families to observe the behavior of mothers and children. Mary Ainsworth died at the age of 85.

plant

Mary Ainsworth developed in the 70s with the so-called Strange Situation ( "Strange Situation Test" from 1970 to 1978) , a setting for research into childhood bonding pattern. For the standardized behavior monitoring of one-year-old children, she chose a waiting room with a play area, as is common in doctor's offices. After a stranger has entered, the mother leaves the room for a short time. Through this separation from the mother, which is a burden for one-year-old children in the unknown environment, attachment behavior should be observed. In the presence of the mother, however, the children should feel safe and be able to explore their surroundings.

Ainsworth found several manifestations of attachment types that can develop within this interaction with the attachment person: secure, insecure-avoiding and insecure-ambivalent. In the first group with “secure” attachment, the balanced interplay between looking for proximity and exploration ( exploration behavior ), predicted by Bowlby's attachment theory, took place, with the mother serving as a secure basis . The second group, which Ainsworth referred to as "avoidant," showed strong exploratory but little attachment behavior and appeared to suffer little from the separation. These children avoided body and eye contact with the mother. The “ambivalent” children in the third group showed hardly any exploratory behavior, were always close to the mother, suffered greatly from the separation and were angry with the mother when she came back.

Awards

Ainsworth has received seven Distinguished Scientific Contribution Awards from various national scientific organizations including the Granville Stanley Hall Award from the American Psychological Association (APA).

Fonts

  • with John Bowlby: Mother Love and Child Development . E. Reinhardt, Munich, Basel 1995.
  • with John Bowlby: Early Bonding and Child Development. E. Reinhardt, Munich / Basel 2001.
  • with Boston: Psychodiagnostic assessment of a child after prolonged separation in early childhood. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 25, 1952, pp. 169-201.
  • with John Bowlby: Research strategy in the study of mother-child separation. Courier de la Center International de l'Enfance, 4, 1954, pp. 105-113.
  • with LH Ainsworth: Measuring Security in Personal Adjustment. World Books, 1958
  • with John Bowlby: Child Care and the Growth of Love . Penguin Books, 1965
  • Infancy in Uganda: Infant Care and the Growth of Love . Johns Hopkins University Press. 1967
  • Infant attachment, with some preventive and clinical implications. Dialogue, 6, 1983, pp. 41-49
  • Patterns of infant-mother attachments: Antecedents and effects on development . Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 61, 1985, pp. 771-791.
  • Attachment beyond infancy . American Psychologist, 44, 1989, pp. 709-716.
  • with John Bowlby: An ethological approach to personality development . American Psychologist, 46, 1991, pp. 333-341.

literature

  • Klaus E. Grossmann (Ed.): Attachment and Human Development: John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth and the basics of attachment theory . Stuttgart 2003.
  • Mary Main : Mary D. Salter Ainsworth - Tribute and Portrait . University of California, Berkeley 1999.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ American Psychological Association (APA): Eminent psychologists of the 20th century In: apa.org .
  2. Helmut Johnson (2006) material on attachment theory and systemic work in education and care (with a description of Bowlby's work from page 13). (PDF, 20 pages, 72 kB, archived).
  3. Kathrin Keller-Schuhmacher (2010) Attachment - from theory to practice: what is important? Presentation at the AWO conference on November 8, 2010 in Freiburg i.Br., (PDF, 10 pages, 111 kB, archived).
  4. AN O'Connell, NF Rusoo: Models of achievement - Reflections of eminent women in psychology. Columbia University Press, New York 1983
  5. ^ Mary Main: Mary D. Salter Ainsworth - Tribute and Portrait. University of California, Berkeley 1999. (PDF, 26 pages, 252 kB, archived).
  6. McLeod: Mary Ainsworth - The Strange Situation. (PDF, 9 pages, 151 kB, archived).
  7. ^ Webster University: Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society: Mary D. Salter Ainsworth. (Archive).