PSYC21H3 Lecture : PSYC21 - Lecture 4
Document Summary
Infants become attached to their mother because they associate her with gratification of their instinctual drive to obtain pleasure through sucking and oral stimulation. Simply, babies naturally gravitate towards the breast and food, its pleasuring. Theories later on suggested that maybe the baby wants the parent not actually the food. Drive-reduction learning theorists suggested that the mother becomes an attachment object because she is associated with the reduction of the baby"s primary drive of hunger. Baby monkey;s preferred to cling to the cloth mother -- esp. in moments of stress -- even though it dispensed no food. Thus, oral gratification and drive reduction are inadequate explanations for attachment. Transitory love object, substitute for parent when they are away with some sort of object. Student of a major psychoanalyst at the time. A good strategy to being parents back, which will increase survival of infants, who during evolutionary history would have otherwise been vulnerable to predation if left unattended.
