Mary Main

Mary Main ( born 1943 ) is an American developmental psychologist and a representative of the binding theory.

Life

Mary Main earned her bachelor's degree in 1968 in Classical archeology and natural science at St. John 's College in Annapolis, Maryland. She then studied psychology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, among others, Mary Ainsworth, and his doctorate in 1973 with a Ph.D. in psychology. Her dissertation " Explore, play and cognitive functions in the mother -child relationship ," concerned with the consequences of various earlier ties with the mother. In the same year she became a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, where she holds a chair of psychology in the area of ​​change, plasticity and development, biopsychology. The focus of her work lies in the attachment theory, the individual relationship differences in discourse, drawing and storytelling, the functional disturbances of consciousness and ethology.

In addition to her professorship at Berkeley, she worked from 1972 to 1973 at the National Institute of Mental Health, 1977-1978 at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research Bielefeld University, from 1985 to 1986 at the University of Virginia and 1995 to 1996 at the University of Leiden.

Work

In her early work at Berkeley Main advanced the identification system on the binding behavior (secure, insecure avoidant, insecure ambivalent ) of Ainsworth to the binding type D = disorganized insecure. Children of this type lacked a coherent behavioral strategy to cope with stress during the Strange Situation Test to deal and behaved disorganized and disoriented. The importance of this discovery lies in the connection therewith found between the early D binding and subsequent social and mental health disorders, such as vulnerability to psychopathology in children and adolescents or hostility towards partners among young adults.

For parents, Mary Main, developed in 1985, the bond interview for adults ( Adult Attachment Interview ). It captures linguistically binding representation or the setting of adults bonds. She discovered that the way parents spoke about their childhood experiences with their own parents, gave evidence as they would treat their future children.

Awards

• 2000 Honorary Doctor of the University of Uppsala, Sweden
• 2004 Holland was at Leiden University, established the Mary Main Department for their life's work in attachment research
• 2007 Honorary Doctor of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden
• 2011 Ehrendokter the University of Haifa, Israel