Original scientific paper

Establishing a Relationship with God and Mary from the Perspective of Attachment Theory

Mateja Cvetek ; Franciscan Family Institute, Ljubljanja, Slovenia
Barbara Simonič orcid.org/0000-0002-5842-2017 ; Faculty of Theology, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Robert Cvetek orcid.org/0000-0002-3048-9965 ; Faculty of Theology, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Abstract

There have been many psychodynamic approaches that tried to explain the connection between early relationship with the mother and father and later religious experience. Many of the »traditional« psychodynamic approaches to religion were subject to criticism, since they have many theoretical, empirical and methodological problems. Attachment theory presents an alternative to them, as it fulfils some important scientific requirements. Attachment theory and its studies suggest, that the quality of early relationships with primary caregivers (usually the mother and father), especially emotional security, seems to have an important impact on the characteristics of interpersonal relationships in later stages of life. We can also consider the relationship with God and Mary from the perspective of early relationships, especially from the perspective of attachment theory, which is one of the leading theories in the field of child and human development. These relationships meet the criteria (maintaining proximity, secure base, haven of safety, separation anxiety) of an attachment relationship. Attachment theory generally uses two basic categories when assessing the quality of attachment, security (that has the most positive impact on later healthy relationships) and insecurity, which has more subcategories. Recently, some researchers have spoken in favour of a more dimensional model of attachment characteristics rather than a categorical one. The purpose of this study, which is empirically an improvement of our previous pilot study, was to contribute to existing research work about the relationship between early attachment to father and mother and the attachment to God and Mary in later stages of life. In literature and in some studies, this relationship is not quite clear, two hypotheses exist: the correspondence hypothesis (the relationship with God is similar or corresponds to the attachment to early caregivers) and the compensation hypothesis (the lack of quality in an early relationship is substituted with a quality relationship with God). Appropriate research about other religious beings (like Mary) is also lacking. In our study, 120 participants from different groups with a Catholic background were included. Similar to as our previous pilot study, that had smaller sample and participants that were less representative of the general catholic population in our cultural environment, this study suggest that according to the results, the majority of participants established a secure attachment with God and Mary. In the part where participants classified themselves in one attachment category we did not find any important correlation between the attachment to the father and mother on the one hand and the attachment to God and Mary on the other. Where participants assessed how much each attachment style (characteristic) holds for them, the results suggest that the attachment to one's father and mother in childhood can partly explain the attachment to God and Mary in adulthood. This is the case in some insecure (avoidant, ambivalent/anxious) characteristics of attachment. In these attachments there seems to be even more important connections, as we concluded from our pilot study. The results suggest that there is a trend that participants form a similar attachment relationship with God and Mary as the kind of attachment they had in their childhood. Generally there are little higher correlations with the relationship with one's mother than with one's father. The highest correlations are between avoidant characteristics of attachment to the mother and all insecure characteristics of attachment to God and Mary, ranging from 0.191 to 0.358 (all six statistically significant). The correlations between avoidant characteristics of attachment to one's father and all insecure characteristics of an attachment to God and Mary range from 0.040 to 0.336 (three of them statistically significant). The results also suggest that attachment bonds to God and Mary are importantly independent from early relationships with parents and dependent also on other factors. According to the results, the characteristics of an attachment to God and the characteristics of an attachment to Mary are partly independent. The results further suggest that the answer to the question of correspondence or compensatory function of relations with God and Mary, is more complex and it is necessary to distinguish different types of attachments.

Keywords

Attachment theory; attachment to God and Mary; empirical study; correspondence and compensation hypothesis

Hrčak ID:

30910

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/30910

Publication date:

13.11.2008.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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