Abstract

Knowledge of materner state of mind with respect to attachment, may provide insight into etiology or maintenance of problematic parent-child interaction and development of Child Psychology. The Subjects of this study were 26, 29-96 month old children referred to a child psychiatric clinic-mother dyads and 26, 44-78 month old normal comparison children-mother days. Maternal state of mind with respect to attachment was assessed by the AAI(Adult Attachment Interview, 1985). The results of this study are as follows : Among clinic children`s tethers; 3.8% were classified as autonomous(F), 26.9% were classified as dismissing(Ds), 19.2% were classified as preoccupied(E) and 50% were classified as unresolved/disorganized(U/d). Among normal children's mothers, 50% were classified as autonomous(F), 20,8% were classified as dismissing(Ds), 16.7 were classified as preoccupied(E) and 12.5% were classified as unresolved/disorganized(U/d). In particular, Unresolved/disorganized maternal attachment were overrepresented in the clinic group. This distribution is quite similar to van Ijzender's meta analytic results(1996)