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Attachment Reconsidered pp 191–214Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Toward a Cultural Psychodynamics of Attachment: Samoa and US Comparisons

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Part of the book series: Culture, Mind, and Society ((CMAS))

Abstract

Attachment theorists see a capacity for close one-to-one bonding and autonomy as ideal developmental outcomes and tend to see early distrust as the inevitable consequence of largely unavoidable separation anxieties that are part of physical and emotional weaning—a consequence mitigated by secure attachment. For Freud ([1930] 1964), in contrast, socialization creates individual anxieties to syphon energy away from personal fulfillment and redirect it toward socially valued behaviors. A psychodynamic account of development, then, would question if one-to-one bonding and autonomy are really ideal or only normative and would ask if separation anxieties are somehow intrinsic to norms and to their reproduction.

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  1. Jeannette Marie Mageo
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Naomi Quinn Jeannette Marie Mageo

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© 2013 Naomi Quinn and Jeannette Marie Mageo

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Mageo, J.M. (2013). Toward a Cultural Psychodynamics of Attachment: Samoa and US Comparisons. In: Quinn, N., Mageo, J.M. (eds) Attachment Reconsidered. Culture, Mind, and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137386724_8

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