After long minutes spent to play with the remote control, we fall finally on a program television which draws our attention: ” route of a placed child “.
This documentary, redraws the process of Yanie, 14 years, placed in the same host family for his 24 months. At a key moment of his development: the adolescence, the young man finds itself brutally torn away from his host family which retires. In the middle of it, Virginie the mother of Yanie who goes out of a long prison sentence, finds itself dispossessed and angry not to be able to get back her son. Around them, an educator, the manager of the educational department strengthened by family -reception and a psychologist, try, as mediators, to facilitate this rough change of environment.
Touched by this real documentary, and representative of a part of the society which is little known to us, we make the link with our undergraduate courses concerning the attachment.
This theory was formalized by the psychiatrist and the psychoanalyst John Bowlby (1958), according to the works of Winnicott, Lorenz and Harlow. It stipulates, that a young child needs, to know a normal social and emotional development, to develop a relation of attachment with at least a person who takes care of him in a coherent and continuous way (“caregiver”).
Further to Mary Ainsworth’s works, a classification of the attachment of the children was able to be set up: the attachment insecure ambivalent / anxious, the attachment insecure avoiding, the attachement secure. Through this documentary, we can identify various forms of attachment. Indeed, at the beginning of the life of Yanie, the abandonment of her mother accompanied the break (detention) leads to predict an attachment insecure rather avoiding. It can explain that the relation created with its first host family especially so young, allowed an attachment rather secure with the latter. The coherent and appropriate reactions of the “adopted” family let emanate a sensibility and certain pleasure in the activity of the child, so allowing assured attachment.
The question of the new attachment concerning “his new family” remains complete. Indeed, the brutal separation with its marks as well as the advanced age of Yanie can ask questions. In 1999 Allen and Land, explain that in the adolescence, the attachment cannot simply consist of a vital need for protection as at the infant. They emit the hypothesis which the essential points for a safety at the teenager concern:
– The possibility of referring in peace to its memories of attachment with his parents;
– The capacity to be maintained with the parental figures of attachment of the positive relations, in spite of the hazards of the adolescence (Allen and Land, on 1999).
These researches raise actually questions on the links of attachment of the children ” give the runaround” by host family in host family.
Words we have learned:
- Host family = Famille d’accueil
- Further to = Suite à
- Safety = Sécurité
- Give the runaround = Être baladé
By Goubeaud Marie, Jolivet Alice & Sauvageot Stessy, M2 PPCECC
Allen, J. P., & Land, D. J. (1999). Attachment in adolescence. In J. Cassidy & P. Schaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: theory, research and clinical implications (p. 595-624). New-York, E-U – The Guilford Press.
Bowlby, J. (1958). The nature of the child’s tie to his mother. International Journal of Psycho- Analysis, 39(5) : 350-373.