Posted by alexandra_k on January 5, 2005, at 17:44:20
Ok, now as usual I probably have the empirical details a little bit wrong, but anyways... here goes.
At the University I am at it is compulsory to do some Maori psychology. Now that has a couple of different meanings... There is Kaupapa Maori psychology which is psychology developed by Maori for Maori, there is Maori psychology in the sense of Western psychology of Maori culture / peoples etc etc.
An issue that came up was how appropriate western psychology was for Maori people. Now here they didn't so much mean neuropsychology but more along the lines of developmental theory etc etc.
I am sure we looked at attachment a bit. So infants show preferential looking for their mother etc, I think that would still be the case. But with respect to that continuing when the baby is older...
If you have 12 or 13 or even 14 or more children then the fact is that you don't have enough time in the day to foster a particular attachment relationship with them all. From about the 3rd or 4th kid, or whatever, the responsibility for picking them up and holding them when they cry etc comes down to being the responsibility of the older siblings.
Western psychologists came on in and wrote about the horrors of children being neglected by their mother. They failed to note that those emotional needs were being met by thier siblings and grandparents and aunties and uncles and so on and so forth. There was no ONE person who took responsibility, rather it was shared and whoever was closest at the time was up.
Now evidence for that being a horrific, unsatisfactory state of affairs was cited as the inability of these children to assimilate well to Western culture. But they were slapped hard for speaking their language at school etc and well, there are a lot of other factors that explain their inability to assimilate well (along with the point that they were treated as second class, uncouth citizens and also the point of why the hell should they?).
Anyway what my point is is that attachment to one figure (such as ones mother) may be part of Western culture. We say that it is the PARTICULAR person who is there that results in the alleviation of distress etc. Well, maybe they can say that it is not so much about the PARTICULAR person. Maybe for them it is about the fact that there is SOME PERSON OR OTHER who can meet their needs, and thus the presence of just someone who understands and so forth is helpful. So maybe for them 'attachments' aren't really so much person specific.
Maybe I do embrace the Western ideal of individualism.
But maybe I do not embrace the Western ideal of attachment.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:438205
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050105/msgs/438205.html