Can attachment theory explain your relationship with the divine?

The authors of the new book God Attachment: Why You Believe, Act, and Feel the Way You Do About God think the (re)emerging field of attachment theory can help us better understand our expectations about a relationship with God.

When we’re faced with stress, we seek closeness to those we feel safe with. Each one of us exerts specific behaviors to help us get closer to those we’re attached to in times of need.

If we don't feel safe; if we are confused in our core beliefs about whether we’re worthy of love or whether others are capable of loving us or accessible when we need them, then we'll transfer those beliefs onto God and struggle to believe he could really be there for us.

But if God serves the functions of an attachment relationship in our individual lives, it can be the difference between cognitively believing in God, as most do, and emotionally connecting, trusting, and walking with him every day, which is much less common.

After a fashion, nothing new. After all, Freud himself wrote that the very idea of God

... was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshipped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness.

Researchers have been keen to one degree or another to push the topic ever since.

Yet attachment theory and religion as paired subjects of thought have gotten their due lately. As Richard Beck (coauthor of an instrument called the Attachment to God Inventory) points out at the beginning of a 2006 blog series,

[M]uch of the enthusiasm surrounding the application of attachment theory to religion is that it moves past mere interest in religion and gets more directly at the God-relationship (and thus improves upon the intrinsic/extrinsic models). Further, attachment models are theory-rich. The supporting framework of attachment theory is huge, both theoretically and empirically. Thus, attachment to God research swims in a deep ocean of ideas, insights, and results (an improvement of over the spiritual well-being approach).

No doubt the subject is the new-old darling of experimental psychology. In the latest issue of the Journal of Psychology & Theology, the lead article is titled "Adult Attachment, God Attachment and Gender in Relation to Perceived Stress."

Posted by Torey Lightcap on November 14, 2010 12:25 PM | |
Comments (5)

Belief in the "unconscious" of Freudian and Jungian theory requires the same kind of leap of faith as belief in a divinity.

Posted by Rod Gillis [TypeKey Profile Page] | November 14, 2010 1:32 PM

I notice two things: none of these authors have ever heard of God as anything but our Father; I wonder if they can even get at Jesus our Friend.

Nor can they really imagine a relationship that goes two ways. Since their God never talks back or reacts at all, they look for ways to explain our seemingly irrational belief. We might as well be praying to a rock.

But that's not our God at all; she initiates relationship and nurtures it if we allow her to.

To get from cognitive belief to "emotionally connecting, trusting and walking with him every day," we have some well known methods: Walk the Way. Eat together as part of a community. Pray daily. Participate in the arts. Practice meditation. Keep silent. Listen.

You can't hear God's voice if you never listen. Rocks don't talk but God does.

Posted by Josh Thomas [TypeKey Profile Page] | November 14, 2010 2:31 PM

Rocks don't talk but God does.

That could never be empirically proven . . . but that's OK. Maybe I *am* projecting my own fantasized Greatest Good/Greatest Love, that I call "God."

But if so, then as the character Puddleglum explained (in CS Lewis's "The Silver Chair"), para., "My dream world can lick your real world hollow."

If the real world can't offer me anything better (Cold uncaring universe, then death & nothingness), I'll stick w/ the (unprovable) Dream World, thanks.

JC Fisher

Posted by tgflux [TypeKey Profile Page] | November 14, 2010 7:12 PM

Just to be a bit of a gadfly, where does attachment theory, making of God an "uber father," place the person who turned to no one when feeling stressed/unsafe---until God appeared.

Posted by Christi Hill [TypeKey Profile Page] | November 14, 2010 8:12 PM

What about Buddhism, which says that attachment is the source of unhappiness? In order to become enlightened, one needs to detach from everything, including Buddhism. Nontheistic Asian religions would call into question parochial psychological theories which seem confined to Christianity.


Gary Paul Gilbert

Posted by garydasein [TypeKey Profile Page] | November 14, 2010 11:36 PM

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