Derailed Infant Attachment Index

"...the loss of mother-figure...
is capable of generating responses and processes
that are of the greatest interest in psychopathology...
a blockage in the capacity to make deep relationships,
such as is present in affectionless and psychopathic personalities.
 
(John Bowlby: "Attachment", First Edition 1969, page XIII)

This literature index deals with the derailment of attachment in infancy.

• Causes of derailment:

  • Emotional Child abuse
  • Infants are raised in nurseries, and caregivers were discouraged from forming attachments to the infants
  • German children are raised in authoritarian households, and caregivers were discouraged from forming attachments to the children.
    Intentional withholding of contact in -->German Childrearing

• Research:

  • Attachment in General
  • Infant Research: -->Developmental Approach to Attachment Theory

• Negative consequences of derailment:

  • the most devastating: -->Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD)
  • still devastating: -->Disorganized/Unresolved Attachment
  • more stable: -->Avoidant/Dismissing Attachment

• Appearance of derailed attachment:

  • lack of Emotions: they come across as Autists, Aspergers
  • lack of social behavior: they come across as -->Psychopaths

Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD)

According to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537155, RAD children

• have difficulty forming emotional attachments to others,
• show a decreased ability to experience positive emotion,
• cannot seek or accept physical or emotional closeness, and may react violently when held, cuddled, or comforted,
• are unpredictable, difficult to console, and difficult to discipline,
• their moods fluctuate erratically, and children may seem to live in a fight, flight, or freeze mode,
• most have a strong desire to control their environment and make their own decisions.

RAD Literature:

• 1944: John Bowlby: Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves: their characters and home-life

• 2011: Jessie Hogsett: De tached - Surviving Reactive Attachment Disorder, A Personal Story

• 2014: Charles A. Nelson, Nathan A. Fox, Charles H. Zeanah: Romania's Abandoned Children - Deprivation, Brain Development, and the Struggle for Recovery

• 2016: Timothy L. Sanford: INSIDE - Understanding How Reactive Attachment Disorder Thinks and Feels

General behavior rules in German society correspond to RAD children characteristics:

• Not getting close to others = have difficulty forming emotional attachments to others,
• Do not smile in public = show a decreased ability to experience positive emotion,
• Do not be too friendly = cannot seek or accept physical or emotional closeness,
• Be watchful, alert = seem to live in a fight, flight, or freeze mode,
• Keep to yourself and in control = a strong desire to control their environment and make their own decisions.

Disorganized/Unresolved Attachment

• 1978: Mary Ainsworth: Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation (2015 reprint)

  

• 1990: Greenberg, Cicchetti, Cummings: Attachment in the Preschool Years - Theory, Research and Intervention

• 1997: Atkinson, Zucker: Attachment and Psychopathology

• 1998: Robert Karen: Becoming Attaced - First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love

• 1999: Solomon, George: Attachment Disorganization

• 2002: Beebe, Lachmann: Infant Research and Adult Treatment - Co-Constructing Interactions

• 2007: Bailey, Moran, Pederson, & Bento: Understanding the transmission of attachment using variable- and relationship-centered approaches (Article in Development and Psychopathology - February 2007)

• 2009: D. Out, C. Cyr, F.T.A. Pijlman, M.D. Beijersbergen, M.J. Bakermans-Kranenburg, & M.H. van IJzendoorn: Disconnected and extremely Insensitive Parenting (DIP) Manual for coding disturbances in parent-child interactions

• 2011: Solomon, George: Disorganized Attachment & Caregiving

• 2011: David and Yvonne Shemmings: Understanding Disorganized Attachment - Theory and Practice for Working with Children and Adults

• 2013: Karlen Lyons-Ruth, Jean-Francois Bureau, M. Ann Easterbrooks, Ingrid Obsuth, Kate Hennighausen: Parsing the Construct of Maternal Insensitivity: Distinct Longitudinal Pathways Associated with Early Maternal Withdrawal

• 2014: David and Yvonne Shemmings: Assessing Disorganized Attachment Behaviour in Children - An Evidence-Based Model for Understanding and Supporting Families

• 2014: Nelson, Fox, Zeanah: Romania's Abandoned Children

• 2014: Beebe, Lachmann: The Origins of Attachment - Infant Research and Adult Treatment

• 2018: Jeremy Holmes, Arietta Slade, Attachment in Therapeutic Practice

German Childrearing

"...they frequently failed to notice their infants or respond to their signals, and rarely initiated interactions with them.
In other words, they behaved in a way that suggested that they did not have an ongoing social or emotional relationship with their infant, apart from meeting some instrumental needs.
At its extreme, such a lack of relational involvement constitutes emotional neglect." (Bailey, Moran, Pederson, & Bento, 2007)

• 1934: Johanna Haarer, Die Deutsche Mutter Und Ihr Erstes Kind

  

   

• 1941: Gregor Ziemer, Education for Death - The Making of the Nazi

• 1942: Margaret Mead, And Keep Your Powder Dry

• 1948: David Rodnick, Postwar Germans - An Anthropologist's Account

• 1974: Lloyd de Mause, The History of Childhood - The Untold Story of Child Abuse

• 1974: Ulrike Meinhof, Bambule - Fürsorge - Sorge für wen ?

• 1975: Selma Fraiberg, Edna Adelson, Vivian Shapiro, Ghosts in the Nursery: A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Problems of Impaired Infant-Mother Relationships (Journal of American Academy of Child Psychiatry)

• 1975: Ekkehard von Braunmühl, Anti-Pädagogik - Studien zur Abschaffung der Erziehung

• 1977: Katharina Rutschky, Schwarze Pädagogik - Quellen zur Naturgeschichte der bürgerlichen Erziehung

• 1977: Bernward Vesper, Die Reise - nachgelassene Autobiographie des Sohns eines NS-Schriftstellers

• 1977: Fritz Zorn, Mars - Ich bin jung und reich und gebildet; und ich bin unglücklich, neurotisch und allein

• 1979: Alice Miller,

  • Das Drama des begabten Kindes
  • The Drama of the Gifted Child (Prisoners of Childhood) - The Search for the True Self (1981)

• 1980: Alice Miller,

  • Am Anfang war Erziehung
  • For Your Own Good - Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (1983)

• 1981: Alice Miller,

  • Du sollst nicht merken
  • Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child (1984)

• 1985: Karin Grossmann; Klaus E. Grossmann; Gottfried Spangler; Gerhard Suess; Lothar Unzner, Maternal Sensitivity and Newborns' Orientation Responses as Related to Quality of Attachment in Northern Germany

• 1985: Peter Sichrovsky:

  • Wir wissen nicht was morgen wird, wir wissen wohl was gestern war - Junge Juden in Deutschland und Österreich
  • Strangers in their own Land - Young Jews in Germany and Austria today (1986)

• 1987: Peter Sichrovsky,

  • Schuldig geboren - Kinder aus Nazifamilien
  • Born Guilty - Children of Nazi Families (1988)

• 1987: Niklas Frank,

  • Der Vater - Eine Abrechnung
  • In the Shadow of the Reich - A letter from a son to his father --- Hans Frank, hanged at Nuremberg (1991)

• 1989: Dan Bar-On, Legacy of Silence - Encounters with Children of the Third Reich

• 1991: Ingo Müller,

  • Furchtbare Juristen: Die unbewältigte Vergangenheit der deutschen Justiz
  • Hitler's Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich (1992)

• 1991: Gerald L. Posner, Hitler's Children - Sons and Daughters of Leaders of the Third Reich Talk About Themselves and their Fathers

• 1998: Sigrid Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, die deutsche Mutter und ihr erstes Kind, (Buchrezension)

• 2001: Sigrid Chamberlain, Zur frühen Sozialisation in Deutschland zwischen 1934 und 1945

• 2002: Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller, Karoline Tschuggnall,

  • Opa war kein Nazi: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis
  • Grandpa Wasn't a Nazi: The Holocaust in German Family Remembrance (2005)

• 2002: Arno Gruen, Der Fremde in uns

• 2003: Margarete Limberg, Hubert Ruebsaat,

  • Sie durften nicht mehr Deutsche sein - Jüdischer Alltag in Selbstzeugnissen 1933-1938
  • Germans No More - Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933-1938 (2006)

• 2005: Norbert Frei, 1945 und Wir - Das Dritte Reich im Bewußtsein der Deutschen

• 2005: Lloyd DeMause, The Childhood Origins of the Holocaust (SPEECH)

• 2006: Peter Wensierski, Schläge im Namen des Herrn - Die verdrängte Geschichte der Heimkinder in der Bundesrepublik

• 2007: Katrin Himmler, Die Brüder Himmler - Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte

• 2008: Hartmut Radebold, Transgenerationale Weitergabe kriegsbelasteter Kindheiten - Interdisziplinäre Studien zur Nachhaltigkeit historischer Erfahrungen über vier Generationen

• 2010: Lloyd DeMause, The Origins of War in Child Abuse

• 2012: Johanna Haarer, Gertrud Haarer, Die deutsche Mutter und ihr letztes Kind: Die Autobiografien der erfolgreichsten NS-Erziehungsexpertin und ihrer jüngsten Tochter

• 2013: Angela Moré, Die unbewusste Weitergabe von Traumata und Schuldverstrickungen an nachfolgende Generationen

• 2014: Jan Lohl, Angela Moré, Unbewusste Erbschaften des Nationalsozialismus - Psychoanalytische, sozialpsychologische und historische Studien

• 2014: Jennifer Teege, AMON - Mein Grossvater hätte mich erschossen

• 2015: Karl Heinz Brisch, Burcu Dogramaci, Miriam Gebhardt, Unerhörte Kinder (Teil 1) - Das Kind als Forschungsgegenstand in der Moderne (PODCAST)

• 2016: Niklas Frank, Dunkle Seele, Feiges Maul - Wie skandalös und komisch sich die Deutschen beim Entnazifizieren reinwaschen

• 2018: Anne Kratzer,

  • Warum Hitler bis heute die Erziehung von Kindern beeinflusst
  • Harsh Nazi Parenting Guidelines May Still Affect German Children of Today (2019)

• 2019: Hans Sachs, Sind wir noch zu retten? - Die politische Bedeutung der frühen Kindheit

• 2019: Anne Kratzer, Erziehung für den Führer (ARTICLE), Erziehung im Nationalsozialismus und deren Prägung bis Heute (YOUTUBE 2021)

• 2019: Miriam Gebhardt, Vortrag zum Wertewandel in der Eltern-Kind-Beziehung der letzten hundert Jahre (YOUTUBE 2019)

• 2021: Bettina Alberti, Seelische Trümmer - Geboren in den 50er- und 60er-Jahren: Die Nachkriegsgeneration im Schatten des Kriegstraumas

• current: Karin Bergstermann, Geschichte der Säuglingspflege (BLOG)

• current: Wikipedia, Transgenerationale Weitergabe (WIKIPEDIA LINK)

• current: Wikipedia, Die deutsche Mutter und ihr erstes Kind (WIKIPEDIA LINK)

Literature on Attachment in General

• 1944: John Bowlby: Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves: their characters and home-life

• 1951: John Bowlby: Maternal and Mental Health (chapter 3: Psychopaths)

• 1952: Phyllis Greenacre: Trauma, Growth, and Personality

• 1966: John Bowlby: Maternal Care and Mental Health

• 1969: John Bowlby, Attachment (1st edition)

• 1983: John Bowlby: Attachment: Attachment and Loss Volume One (2nd edition)

• 1975: Ronald Rohner: They Love Me, They Love Me Not - A Worldwide Study of the Effects of Parental Acceptance and Rejection

• 1976: John Bowlby: Separation: Anxiety And Anger Volume Two

• 1978: Mary Ainsworth: Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation (2015 reprint)

• 1982: John Bowlby: Loss: Sadness And Depression Volume Three

• 1988: John Bowlby: A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development

Attachment Literature from older Psychoanalysis concepts

• 1992: Ehrenberg: The Intimate Edge - Extending the Reach of Psychoanalytic Interaction

• 2001: Jon G. Allen: Traumatic Relationships and Serious Mental Disorders

• 2001: Peter Fonagy: Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis

• 2002: Fonagy/Gergely/Jurist/Target: Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self

• 2003: Carter/Ahnert/Grossmann/Hrdy/Lamb/Porges/Sachser: Attachment and Bonding - A New Synthesis

• 2003: Kantor: Distancing - Avoidant Personality Disorder

• 2004: Brisch: Treating Attachment Disorders: From Theory to Therapy

• 2006: Grossmann/Waters: Attachment from Infancy to Adulthood: The Major Longitudinal Studies

• 2009/2017: Brisch: Bindungsstörungen

Literature on Developmental Approach to Attachment

• 1957: D. W. Winnicott, Mother and Child - A Primer on First Relationships

• 1977: Daniel Stern, The First Relationship - Infant and Mother

• 1985: Daniel Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant - A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology

• 1990: Daniel N. Stern, Diary of a Baby - What your child sees, feels, and experiences

• 2002: Beatrice Beebe, Frank M. Lachmann, Infant Research and Adult Treatment - Co-Constructing Interactions

• 2005: Beatrice Beebe, Steven Knoblauch, Judith Rustin, Dorielle Sorter, Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment

• 2014: Beatrice Beebe, Frank M. Lachmann, The Origins of Attachment - Infant Research and Adult Treatment

• 2016: Beatrice Beebe, Phyllis Cohen, Frank M. Lachmann, The Mother-Infant Interaction Picture Book - Origins of Attachment

Nineteen Eighty-Four

• "The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it. All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose, and - though the principle was never clearly stated - permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party. Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (ARTSEM, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And as far as the women were concerned, the Party's efforts were largely successful.

  He thought again of Katharine. It must be nine, ten- nearly eleven years since they had parted. It was curious how seldom he thought of her. For days at a time he was capable of forgetting that he had ever been married. They had only been together for about fifteen months. The Party did not permit divorce, but it rather encouraged separation in cases where there were no children."

• "Katharine was a tall, fair-haired girl, very straight, with splendid movements. She had a bold, aquiline face, a face that one might have called noble until one discovered that there was as nearly as possible nothing behind it. Very early in her married life he had decided-though perhaps it was only that he knew her more intimately than he knew most people - that she had without exception the most stupid, vulgar, empty mind that he had ever encountered. She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her. 'The human sound-track' he nicknamed her in his own mind. Yet he could have endured living with her if it had not been for just one thing - sex.

  As soon as he touched her she seemed to wince and stiffen. To embrace her was like embracing a jointed wooden image. And what was strange was that even when she was clasping him against her he had the feeling that she was simultaneously pushing him away with all her strength. The rigidlty of her muscles managed to convey that impression. She would lie there with shut eyes, neither resisting nor co-operating but SUBMITTING. It was extraordinarily embarrassing, and, after a while, horrible. But even then he could have borne living with her if it had been agreed that they should remain celibate. But curiously enough it was Katharine who refused this. They must, she said, produce a child if they could. So the performance continued to happen, once a week quite regularly, whenever it was not impossible. She even used to remind him of it in the morning, as something which had to be done that evening and which must not be forgotten. She had two names for it. One was 'making a baby', and the other was 'our duty to the Party' (yes, she had actually used that phrase). Quite soon he grew to have a feeling of positive dread when the appointed day came round. But luckily no child appeared, and in the end she agreed to give up trying, and soon afterwards they parted."

  (George Orwell, Nineteen-Eighty-Four, 1949, pages 83-85)

Avoidant/Dismissing Attachment

• Davd Lykken: "The absence of a nurturant parent during a critical period [in childhood] may prevent the development of the normal capacity for love and attachment ..."

• Brown/Elliott's list of manifestations of dismissing attachment:

  • Avoidance of getting close or being intimate
  • Discomfort with closeness
  • Ambivalence
  • Dismissing behaviors
  • Aloofness and contempt
  • Mistrust about depending on others
  • Difficulty getting close
  • Preference for remaining distant
  • Fear of closeness
  • Lack of emotion or minimization of emotional expression
  • Discomfort with opening up, especially about private thoughts
  • False self
  • Pulls away if someone gets close
  • Illusion of self-sufficiency
  • Alexithymia

• 2014 Jeb Kinnison, How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner, p.43ff:

  "I am good. I don't need others"

  "...they think highly of themselves and will tell you they value their self-sufficiency and independence -

  • --> needing others is weak
  • --> feelings of attachment are strings to hold you down
  • --> empathy and sympathy are for lesser creatures"

  "dismissives will learn to get their needs for attention, sex, and community met through less demanding partners who fail to require real reciprocation or intimacy"

  "The Dismissive attempts to limit his level of exposure to partners by manipulating his response, commonly by failing to respond to messages requiring assurance. Dismissives let you know,

  • --> that you are low on their priority list,
  • --> and your inner emotional state is your problem
  • --> when you are with one, you are really still alone, in an attachment sense."

Germany and Russia have a high percentage of avoidant attachments

• 2005, Grossmann/Grossmann/Waters, Attachment from Infancy to Adulthood, p.127:

  "At the end of the first year, 24 out of 49 (49%) infants had shown an avoidant pattern of attachment to their mother. The high proportion of avoidance in infancy had made this study a statistical 'outlier' in cross-cultural comparison (van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg, 1988)"

• 2010: Phyllis Erdman (Editor), Kok-Mun Ng (Editor): Attachment: Expanding the Cultural Connections (Family Therapy and Counseling):

  "An early meta-analysis of children's attachment patterns (van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg, 1988) demonstrated that when grouped together, samples from Germany significantly deviated from expected patterns of secure attachment toward avoidance. Considering that two of the three studies reported from Germany were completed by researchers who report fine-tuning scoring methods to account for "the German manner of conversation, which tends to understate the intensity of emotions" (Grossmann, Grossmann, & Kindler, 2005, p. 106), finding a tendency toward avoidance is even more remarkable. More recent work from Germany (Pauli-Pott, Haverkock, Pott, & Beckmann, 2007) reported a sample in which 36% of classifiable infants studied were labeled as avoidant, the same overall percentage found in studies from Germany reported in van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg's meta-analysis."

  "Similar trends can be seen in patterns of adult attachment. Broemer and Blümle (2003), classifying adults into one of four attachment styles, reported that 25% of their German sample was labeled dismissing. Grossmann (personal communication, September 16, 2007) reported that in two major longitudinal studies of attachment conducted in Germany, between 30% and 39% of samples in adolescence and young adulthood were classified as dismissing via the AAI. The prevalence of dismissing attachment in nonclinical, Western samples tends to run about 20% (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998; van IJzendoorn & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 1996). Although he used continuous scales rather than a classification scheme, Banse's (2005) recent work in Germany on relationship satisfaction and attachment in married couples provided more data supporting a tendency toward what seems to be a greater likelihood of dismissing attachment. In the study, on average, both persons in couples received the second highest score on the dismissing scale; this average score was typically half of a point higher (on a 5-point scale) than the average scores on the other nonsecure styles of attachment."

• Germany has a high percentage of avoidant attachments (http://www.psychology4a.com/cross-cultural.html).

• 2014: Jan Lohl, Angela Moré: Unbewusste Erbschaften des Nationalsozialismus

  • "In ihren Analysen der von Haarer geäußerten Empfehlungen an junge Mütter für den Umgang mit dem Baby weisen Sigrid Chamberlain (1998) und Gesa Koch-Wagner (2001) nach, dass diese Anweisungen zu nichts besserem geeignet waren als massive Bindungsstörungen und Erfahrungen von Deprivation und Gefühlskälte bei den Säuglingen hervorzurufen - mit entsprechenden Folgen für die spätere psychische Entwicklung. Die hohe Verbreitung von Depressionen, mangelndem Selbstwertgefühl und Versagensängsten bei der Generation der im Nationalsozialismus Geborenen und Aufgewachsenen hat neben anderen Gründen (wie Kriegstraumatisierungen) auch solche frühen Beziehungsstörungen als Ursache."

• 2016 Brown/Elliott, Attachment Disturbances in Adults, p.57: Russians showed a very high percentage of avoidant attachments:

  "Pleshkova and Muhammedrahimov (2010) assessed family-reared infants in St. Petersburg, Russia, with the Strange Situation Procedure and found that only 6.2% could be secure (B) in relation with their mothers. They state: 'We found a considerably lower proportion of infants with a secure pattern of attachment than has been found in other countries' ..."

• 2019 Nazi Parenting Techniques - Harsh Guidelines May Still Affect German Children of Today:

  • In 1934 physician Johanna Haarer published "The German Mother and Her First Child". Her advice guided child-rearing in the Third Reich. It ultimately sold some 1.2 million copies, almost half of them after the end of World War II.
  • In that book, Haarer recommended that children be raised with as few attachments as possible. If a child cried, that was not the mother’s problem. Excessive tenderness was to be avoided at all cost.
  • Psychotherapists fear that this kind of upbringing led many children in Germany to develop attachment difficulties and that those problems might have been passed on to subsequent generations.

  Links:

  • NAZI PARENTING GUIDELINES
  • Nazi Parenting Techniques – Harsh Guidelines May Still Affect German Children of Today

Consequences of avoidant attachments

• 2016, Mikulincer+Shaver, Attachment in Adulthood, p.436-442:

  "insecure attachment predisposes people to psychological disorders. ... adult attachment styles and personality disorders share a common structure."

  "Higher levels of attachment-related avoidance were associated with more severe Cluster A symptoms (paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal disorders.). Higher rates of attachment anxiety were associated with Cluster B (antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic disorders) and Cluster C (avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive disorders) personality disorder symptoms."

  "extreme levels of avoidant attachment would be expected in conjunction with schizoid personality disorder, which is marked by aloofness, lack of interest in interpersonal relations, and maintenance of interpersonal distance."

• 2014 Jeb Kinnison, How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner, p.62:

  "...how easy this pattern fits with Narcissitic Personality Disorder. ...people who fit into this range can most often manage to get along just fine - but have extremely limited (if any) ability to feel and therefore to care how others feel..."

• Avoidant attached persons are self-centered, lack empathy for others and avoid social contact and intimacy.

  Brown/Elliott, Attachment Disturbances in Adults, p.208: "...Sweden. All offenders were given the Hare Psychopathic Checklist... Dismissing attachment was overrepresented in this sample: 64%..."

  DSM-5 proposed definition the Antisocial/Psychopathic Type:

  "Individuals who resemble this personality disorder type seek power over others and will manipulate, exploit, deceive, con, or otherwise take advantage, in order to inflict harm or to achieve their goals. An arrogant, self-centered, and entitled attitude is pervasive, along with callousness and little empathy for others' needs or feelings. Rights, property, or safety of others is disregarded, with little or no remorse or guilt if others are harmed. Emotional expression is mostly limited to irritability, anger, and hostility; acknowledgement and articulation of other emotions, such as love or anxiety, are rare. There is little insight into motivations and an impaired ability to consider alternative interpretations of experience."

Literature on Avoidant Attachment

• 1990: Kim Bartholomew: Avoidance of Intimacy: An Attachment Perspective

• 1994: West, Sheldon-Keller: Patterns of Relating: An Adult Attachment Perspective

• 1997: Jeffrey Simpson/Steven Rholes: Attachment Theory and Close Relationships

• 1998: Robert Karen: Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love

• 2004: Susan Johnson: The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy - Creating Connection

• 2014: Jeb Kinnison: Bad Boyfriends - Using Attachment Theory to avoid Mr. Wrong and Make You a Better Partner

• 2014: Jeb Kinnison: Avoidant: How to Love (or Leave) a Dismissive Partner

• 2016: Mikulincer, Shaver: Attachment in Adulthood, Second Edition: Structure, Dynamics, and Change

• 2016: Brown, Elliott: Attachment Disturbances in Adults - Treatment for Comprehensive Repair, Chapter 11: Treating Dismissing Attachment

Attachment Links

• Wikipedia: Attachment in Adults

• What Is Your Attchment Style?

• Can I Change Someone with an Avoidant Attachment Style?

• Romantic Love Conceptualized as an Attachment Process

• Attachment Processes in Adult Romantic Relationships

Psychopath Index

Brown/Elliott, Attachment Disturbances in Adults, p.208: "...Sweden. All offenders were given the Hare Psychopathic Checklist... Dismissing attachment was overrepresented in this sample: 64%..."

DSM-5 proposed definition the Antisocial/Psychopathic Type:

"Individuals who resemble this personality disorder type seek power over others and will manipulate, exploit, deceive, con, or otherwise take advantage, in order to inflict harm or to achieve their goals. An arrogant, self-centered, and entitled attitude is pervasive, along with callousness and little empathy for others' needs or feelings. Rights, property, or safety of others is disregarded, with little or no remorse or guilt if others are harmed. Emotional expression is mostly limited to irritability, anger, and hostility; acknowledgement and articulation of other emotions, such as love or anxiety, are rare. There is little insight into motivations and an impaired ability to consider alternative interpretations of experience."

Ponerology.com (Andrew Lobaczewski), 2008:

"Like a color blind man incapable of distinguishing red from green, a small minority of the human population cannot experience or fully comprehend the normal range of human emotions. And like those color blind who may conceal their condition by using the correct words while not understanding their meaning (e.g., the top traffic light is "red", the bottom is "green") - so does this minority conceal their condition by playacting an emotion's exterior signs (facial expressions, exclamations, body language). However, they do not actually experience the emotion in question."

The Psychopathic Mind - Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment, page 91 (J. Reid Meloy), 2002:

• " Once they have encouraged adulation and required submissiveness from their followers, yet remaining vulnerable to feelings of intense envy toward those they perceive as challenging their leadership, psychopathic leaders will aggressively defend their position without reference to values or empathic constraint. The transference illusion that they compel in their followers is that they do care for their welfare and are ideologically committed to their cause.

  The end result of psychopathic leadership is destruction of the group. Followers are aggressively controlled to function as gratifying selfobjects and sources of narcissistic mirroring. Splitting within the group will occur as those who refuse to carry the grandiose projections of the psychopath begin to challenge his leadership and are perceived, perhaps quite accurately, as persecutory and malevolent forces by the psychopath. The primitive defenses of the psychopathic process are acted out in the group behavior, rather than higher-level compromise of opinion and modulation of affect that a less pathological leader could facilitate. The complete absence of internalized values and emotional attachment to the group members may result in utterly cruel and ruthless acts by the psychopathic leader toward both his submissive followers and perceived enemies."

Alice Miller:

• "The children systematically subjected to obedience drill around the turn of the century were not only exposed to corporal 'correction' but also to severe emotional deprivation. The upbringing manuals of the day described physical demonstrations of affection ... as indications of a doting, mollycoddling attitude. Parents were warned of the disastrous effects of spoiling their children, a form of indulgence entirely incompatible with the prevalent ideal of rigor and severity."

  "The rigorous obedience training [of Eichmann, Himmler, Hoess, etc.] in earliest infancy stunted the development of such human capacities as compassion and pity for the sufferings of others. They were incapable of emotion in the face of misfortune... Their total emotional atrophy enabled the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes imaginable to function 'normally'.... "

Juergen Ruesch + Weldon Kees, "Nonverbal Communication", 1961:

• "Since interpersonal sensitivity does not guide the exchange of messages, the Germans need to establish rigid rules of conduct that regulate group and interpersonal relationships. Communication in German culture is thus shaped by ideas of rigid order and law. Devotion to duty often takes the place of understanding one another, and German gestures are, therefore, not so much signals for communicating details as they are metacommunicative statements about personal assumptions, roles, and social position."

Psychopathy Source Texts

• 1835: Pritchard, A Treatise on Insanity

• 1912: Bernard Hart, Psychology of Insanity

• 1939: D. K. Henderson, M.D., Psychopathic States
  On p. 97-104 he names T.E. Lawrence and Joan of Arc as two examples of genius correlated to psychopathy.

• 1941: Hervey Cleckley, M.D., The Mask of Sanity - An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality

• 1944: Robert M. Lindner, Rebel Without a Cause - The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath

• 1954: August Aichhorn, Wayward Youth - A Psychoanalytic Study of Delinquent Children

• 1959: Carl Frankenstein, Psychopathy - A Comparative Analysis of Clinical Pictures

• 1964: William McCord and Joan McCord, The Psychopath - An Essay on the Criminal Mind

• 1980: Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig, The Emptied Soul - On the Nature of the Psychopath

• 1986: William H. Reid, Darwin Dorr, John I. Walker, Jack W. Bonner, III, Unmasking the Psychopath - Antisocial Personality and Related Syndromes

• 1990: Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D. & Stanley Lependorf, Ph.D., in Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Narcissistic Pathology of Everyday Life

• 1993: Robert D. Hare, PhD, Without Conscience - The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us

• 1995: David T. Lykken, The Antisocial Personalities

• 1995: Robert D. Hare, Psychopathy Checklist (PCL)

• 1998: Millon et al, Psychopathy - Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior

• 2001: J. Reid Meloy, The Mark of Cain - Psychoanalytic Insight and the Psychopath

• 2002: J. Reid Meloy, The Psychopathic Mind - Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment

• 2005: Martha Stout, Ph.D., The Sociopath Next Door

• 2005: James Blair, Derek Mitchell, Karina Blair, The Psychopath - Emotion and the Brain

• 2006: Paul Babiak, Ph.D. & Robert D. Hare, PhD, Snakes in Suits - When Psychopaths Go To Work

• 2006: Patrick, Handbook of Psychopathy

• 2007: Hugues Herve & John C. Yuille, The Psychopath - Theory, Research and Practice

• 2011: Theodore Millon, Disorders of Personality - Introducing a DSM/ICD Spectrum from Normal to Abnormal, 3rd Ed.

• 2014: Stanton E. Samenow, Ph.D., Inside the Criminal Mind

Psychopathy Derived Texts

• 1988: Ken Magid, Carole A. McKelvey, High Risk - Children without a Conscience

• 1996: George Simeon, Jr., In Sheep's Clothing - Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People

• 2008: Barbara Bentley, A Dance with the Devil - A True Story of Marriage to a Psychopath

• 2009: Sandra L. Brown, Women Who Love Psychopaths - Inside the Relationships of Inevitable Harm With Psychopaths, Sociopaths, and Narcissists

• 2011: Stefan H. Verstappen: Defense Against The Psychopath - A Brief Introduction to Human Predators

• 2011: Thomas Sheridan, Puzzling People - The Labyrinth of the Psychopath

• 2012: Thomas Sheridan, Defeated Demons - Freedom from Consciousness Parasites in Psychopathic Society

• 2012: Ronald Schouten, Almost a Psychopath - Do I (or Does Someone I Know) Have a Problem with Manipulation and Lack of Empathy?

• 2013: Hans R. Arnold, How Mothers with Postnatal Depression Create Narcissism and Psychopaths

• 2014: Kent A. Kiehl, The Psychopath Whisperer

• 2015: Adelyn Birch, Psychopaths and Love

• 2015: Adelyn Birch, More Psychopaths and Love

Psychopathy Hijacked Texts

• 2008: Andrew Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

• 2010: Christopher Hyatt, Jack Willis, The Psychopath's Bible: For the Extreme Individual

• 2011: Misha Votruba, Vaclav Dejcmar, I am Fishead movie

• 2020: Texe Marrs, Psychopaths - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Strategies of a Psychopath

• 1989: Keith Johnstone, Impro - Improvisation and the Theatre (chapter: status)

• 1992: Scott Wetzler, Living With the Passive-Aggressive Man

• 2005: John Clarke, Working with Monsters - How to Identify and Protect Yourself from the Workplace Psychopath

• 2007: John Clarke, The Pocket Psycho - Tips and Tricks and Advice to Help Identify and Protect Yourself from the Workplace Psychopath

• 2010: George Simon, In Sheep's Clothing - Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People

• 2013: Astrid Posner, Die smarte Art, sich durchzusetzen - Status-Spiele erkennen and für sich entscheiden (power over others)

• 2014: Tom Schmitt, Michael Esser, Status Spiele - Wie ich in jeder Situation die Oberhand behalte (power over others)

• 2015: Adelyn Birch, 30 Covert Emotional Manipulation Tactics - How Manipulators Take Control in Personal Relationships

Hitler, the Psychopath

For an authoritarian state the individual counts only as a contributing member. The authoritarian state alone knows what is good for the state, does not need any help of the individual and does not need the individual to be intelligent and/or gregarious. The authoritarian state wants a willing member, and does not want his members to socialize/to associate with each other, because if they group together it would make them harder to govern/control.

The personal well-being of an individual is not relevant/important for the state. Dating back to the Prussian harsh child training of future soldiers, the Nazi ideal of the emotionally unavailable mother fulfils these requirements. Emotional unavailability constitutes child abuse, and it causes insecure, avoidant attachment with all the ramifications.

• 1935: Dr. Otto Straßer, Die deutsche Bartholomäusnacht

• 1938: Kurt Ludecke, I Knew Hitler - The Story of a Nazi who Escaped The Blood Purge

• 1944: Konrad Heiden, Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power

• 1955: August Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew

• 1957: Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hitler - The Missing Years

• 1961: Richard Hughes, The Fox in the Attic [historical novel]

• 1973: Richard Hughes, The Wooden Shepherdess [historical novel]

• 1977: Robert G.L. Waite, The Psychopathic God Adolf Hitler

• 1980: Ernst Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre mit Hitler. Zwischen Weissem und Braunem Haus

• 2000: Ivo Holmqvist, From Putsch to Purge - A Study of the German Episodes in Richard Hughes's The Human Predicament and their Sources.

• 2005: Ernst Hanfstaengl, The Unknown Hitler - Notes from the Young Nazi Party

• 2006: Andrzej Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology

Psychopathy in Fiction Novels

• 1879: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Karamazov, Pavel Smerdyakov)

• 1925: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, Daisy Buchanan)

• 1930: Upton Sinclair, Mountain City (Jed Rusher)

• 1939: Phyllis Bottome, Danger Signal (Ronnie Mason)

• 1943: Laura Z. Hobson, The Trespassers (Jasper Crown)

• 1943: Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (Howard Roark)

• 1947: Natalie Anderson Scott, The Story of Mrs. Murphy (James "Rags" Murphy)

• 1947: George Orwell (John Blair): Such, Such Were The Joys

• 1948: Raoul C. Faure, Lady Godiva and Master Tom (Lady Godiva)

• 1949: George Orwell (John Blair): Nineteen Eighty-Four (the system, his wife Katherine)

• 1952: John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Cathy Ames, later Cathy Trask, then Catherine Amesbury [C=Cain])

• 1954: William March, The Bad Seed (Rhoda Penmark)

• 1957: Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (Hank Rearden)

• 1959: Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz (the psychopath Rudolf Höss in his own words)

• 1961: Richard Hughes, The Fox in the Attic (Adolf Hitler)

• 1960: Mary Astor, The Incredible Charlie Carewe (Charlie Carewe)

• 1960: Allen Wheelis, The Seeker (psychoanalyst)

• 1965: Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (Dick Hickock)

• 1971: Colin Higgins, Harold and Maude (Mrs. Chasen, Harold's mom)

• 1981: Helen Yglesias, Sweetsir (Morgan Beauchamp Sweetsir)

• 1987: Joseph Wambaugh, Echoes in the Darkness (Bill Bradfield)

Psychopathy in Movies

• 1944: Gaslight (Gregory Anton, the husband)

• 1945: Danger Signal (Ronnie Mason)

• 1949: The Fountainhead (Howard Roark)

• 1950: Sunset Boulevard (Norma Desmond)

• 1952: East of Eden (Cathy Ames)

• 1969: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid)

• 1971: Harold and Maude (Mrs. Chasen, Harold's mom)

• 1972: The Mechanic (Arthur Bishop & apprentice)

• 1973: Badlands (Holly and Kit)

• 1974: The Great Gatsby (Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, Daisy Buchanan)

• 1974: Death Wish I (Paul Kersey)

• 1978: TV series "Dallas" (J.R. Ewing, Lucy Ewing) - series was hugely popular in Germany

• 1981: TV series "Dynasty" (Blake Carrington, Alexis Colby)

• 1982: The Blade Runner (replicants do not have emotions)

• 1982: Death Wish II (Paul Kersey)

• 1993: Schindler's List (Amon Goeth)

• 1999: The Matrix (energy harvesting)

• 2003: The Matrix Reloaded

• 2003: The Matrix Revolutions

• 2011: Atlas Shrugged: Part I (Hank Rearden)

• 2012: Atlas Shrugged: Part II (Hank Rearden)

• 2014: Atlas Shrugged: Part III (Hank Rearden)