[Development, experience and relationship patterns: psychological health from the object attachment viewpoint]

In this article the author begins to integrate different theoretical perspectives in order to develop a more comprehensive model of normative and disordered pathways of development, in which genetic heritage, maturation, and individual differences in experience all play a role in the development of individual differences in adaptation. Specifically, differences in early attachment relationships are reconceptualized in terms of learned patterns of processing of cognitive and affective information and learned behavioral strategies for eliciting caregiving from attachment figures. In this model the basic nature of the mind is to be self-correcting so as to yield increasingly sophisticated and adaptive mental and behavioral patterns.