American International Journal of Social Science

Looking In, Looking Out: Attachment Theory, Psychoanalytic Object Relations, and Academia
Tamader Al-Thani, Yassir Semmar

Abstract
Ever since the pioneering works of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, attachment theory has been the subject of much interest among psychologists. Over the past three decades, researchers have explored and established several relationships between individuals' attachment representations and various aspects of psychosocial and cognitive functioning. Attachment theories and psychoanalytic object relations can provide insight into the processes through which attachment transactions are transformed into mental representations. The goal of this paper is to examine the similarities and differences between Fonagy's models of transgenerational consistencies of attachment and object relations theory, and discuss the influence of attachment patterns on students' academic achievement.

Full Text: PDF