Indicators of disorganised attachment in children

Disorganised attachment refers to momentary behaviours displayed by children if they find themselves in anxiety-provoking situations into which an abusive caregiver enters. Because they don’t know what to do, they experience what American academic Mary Main called “fear without solution” and end up behaving in bizarre ways, albeit only for a few seconds. Older children display disorganised attachment behaviours when they contemplate attachment-related scenarios involving caregivers. The condition is predictive of maltreatment, not merely correlated with it.