Attachment and Spiritual Maturity 33
1969; Bowlby, 1988). In confronting the world, not only is God encountered, but he is searched out in unmet social needs. For example, in the popular maxim that there are
"there are no atheists in foxholes," research shows that in combat soldiers do pray
(Allport, 1950). When an attachment need presents itself and no human attachment is
available, God is found as the fulfillment ofthe attachment need.
Rizzuto (1979) moves beyond Kirkpatrick (1994) by arguing that belief in God influences a person's psychic integration.
"The child's and adult's sense of self is affected by the representational traits of the individual's private God" (Rizzuto, 1979).
She describes the ordinary, expected connections between a child's parental experience,
including cognitive concepts and affect, and her clients' relation to God. She concludes,
that when there is a secure affectional bond between the child and the parent, there is
freedom to hear the 'silent communication' from God.
From the perspective of a secure base, one can also more readily go explore who
God is in relationship to oneself, and others. A secure base keeps one from being
distracted by having to use the internal and external strategies described by Kobak et al.
(1993) and Main et al. (1985) in order to maintain safety and security. Rather, an
individual can hear and respond to the internal need for social cohesion through an
affectual bond with God that He will never break.
God desires humans to attach to Him and His love. Through His Holy Spirit
He creates motivation in people much like a child moves toward the secure base and safe
haven of love from a mother. As a person grows up, their response to that need for social
cohesion is initiated by the internal representation of the secure affectional bonds an
individual developed early with mother, later with others, and all the time guided by the
Holy Spirit. The security one feels from God has to provide both a haven of safety and a
secure base, not emphasizing one function over the other (Noller, 1992). The God who is
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