Attachment, Aggression, and the Prevention of Malignant Prejudice

Abstract

In a 7-year-long study of mothers with their newborns we found a stable correlation between the quality of the child's attachment to mother and the child's aggression profile. This was further documented in 19-year, 32-year, and 37-year follow-up studies. The child's attachment may be made more secure and aggression profile more benign when parents are informed by child development optimizing parenting education.

Henri Parens, M.D., Training and Supervising Analyst (Adult & Child), Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia; Professor of Psychiatry, Thomas Jefferson University; Director, Parenting for Emotional Growth, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.

In subsequent study, we found that both attachment and aggression have a direct bearing on the development of prejudice. Two attachment factors—stranger anxiety and identification with attachment objects—predispose each of us to feel prejudice against others. But this is benign prejudice; it does not predispose to wish to harm others.

Two key factors lead to the conversion of one's benign prejudice into malignant prejudice: (a) one attaches onto others one's internalized, accumulated hostility and hate; and (b) one attaches onto others one's dictated and cultivated hostility and hate compelled by the militant education to which we are subjected. Regarding the first issue, harsh and/or abusive child rearing tends to generate high levels of hostility and hate in children that may infuse their benign prejudice and convert it to malignant prejudice. Therefore, optimizing child rearing by means of formal parenting education in childhood and adolescence may optimize the future generation of children's attachment and aggression profiles which in turn may reduce in them the formation of malignant prejudice. Regarding the second factor, every society—ethnic, religious, national—has experienced chronic strains and traumas that play a large role in its forging a militant educational system that is often laden with programmed malevolent distortions about others. Can mental health professionals not contribute toward the lessening of this source of malignant prejudice?

Notes

Henri Parens, M.D., Training and Supervising Analyst (Adult & Child), Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia; Professor of Psychiatry, Thomas Jefferson University; Director, Parenting for Emotional Growth, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.

¹ National Public Radio, Morning Edition of 8/23/2005.

²Januscz Korczak (1878–1942) an innovative educator, physician, author, held that “children [ought to be taught] about justice by treating them justly, and [that to cultivate] future leaders [one should give] them an opportunity to lead” (Weiss, 2001, p. 54).