Attachment and Spiritual Maturity 28
conceptualized as an emotional tie in which emotional experience and expression
organizes attachment behaviors and regulates closeness and distance. The emotional
accessibility and responsiveness ofeach partner forms the basis of the bond between
them and facilitates emotional engagement and contact (Johnson & Greenberg, 1994).
In this framework, attachment and the affective components that organizes
attachment behaviors are adaptive and serve to form a model from which the individual
can confront the world (Bowlby, 1969; Bowlby, 1988). Attachment behaviors and
associated emotional responses are considered to be innate, and tend to increase in
intensity if the bond with the attachment figure is threatened. Typically, in the face of
separation, protest and anger, clinging, despair, and detachment follow. The quality of
adult attachment is considered to be mediated by strong emotional responses and working
models of self and other learned in early attachment contexts (Johnson & Greenberg,
1994).
In summary affective bonds in early attachments, form representational models of
the social aspects of the selfwhich can be conceived as influencing adult attachment.
Attachment theory is helpful in explaining the continuity ofchildhood attachment and
intimate adult relationships. It provides a useful theory to explore the role of relational
development in spiritual growth.
The Integrated Foundations of Spiritual and Relational Maturity
This section describes several authors views regarding the relationship between
relational development and spiritual maturity. Anderson (1997) proposes a theological
model of inter-relatedness. This model is theological and developmental. It is within the
developmental order of belonging, self-identity, affective wholeness, and self-worth that
the social influences spiritual maturity. Anderson discusses how the social aspect of the
self is foundational to the spiritual aspect of personhood. The origin of social formation
is explored in the attachment and separation process ofMahler, Pine, and Bergman (1975)
and Stern (1985). Their individuation process is then contrasted with Tillich's (1954)
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