Autism and Attachment Theory

Attachment Theory and Autism: I was recently asked why Attachment Theory is so problematic in relation to autistic people and autism. I realised that whilst I’d talked about this in various trainings and interviews etc I hadn’t written anything. So here is an overview of why Attachment Theory is so problematic, and specifically why it might be problematic if applied to Autistic children…

So firstly, what is attachment theory?

Very simplistically, attachment theory tries to describe the way humans form emotional bonds with each other, particularly within longstanding relationships. It’s looked at as a developmental model, with a great emphasis on the role of caregivers, and it determines that that caregivers and how they ‘attach’ with an infant, predicts how other relationships in that child’s life will form.

Attachment theory has a weak evidence base in terms of how it was developed and the suppositions that led from that development, and can be incredibly controversial in it’s application. Especially when used by those who don’t understand the concept beyond a superficial way, and whom aren’t critical enough to recognise it’s flaws.

Initially beginning to be conceptualised in his work as a Psychiatrist in the 1920’s and 30’s, what eventually came to be known as ‘Attachment Theory, was developed by John Bowlby and later contributed to by his student, Mary Ainsworth. It was modelled on the behaviour noted by Austrian Zoologist Konrad Lorenz, between geese and their chicks (yes, geese, the flying white birds that are definitely not human), before being modelled onto human development. I’m not going to go into the full development of Attachment Theory, as others have done this in far more detail than I could do justice to. If you are interested in it then you can visit this article in The Psychologist for a nice overview of how the theory evolved.

This brings me to the initial issue with attachment theory:

There has been a lack of critical knowledge applied to it, both historically and presently. It was developed during a period of time (1930’s – 1980’s) that had a limited and incredibly normative understanding of human development. Even by the late 1980’s what we know now, was not known then. While our understanding of lots of things was growing through that period, much of it was shaped by the limited view of the world, and life generally, that people had at the time. Attachment Theory, like many Psychological theories, was shaped extensively by things that we’re still affected by today, such as sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, misogyny, a deference to westernised and capitalist ideals, colonialism and a dismissal of non-westernised cultures as less civilised, even the influences of religion and religious doctrine. Not to mention the ceiling limits of our scientific understanding through those times.

Our understanding of human development is changing constantly, as is our understanding of biology, neurology, gender, sex and on and on. Everything we think we know, turns out to be a step into lots more that we don’t know, and much we have to revise or rethink or reframe. Human development specifically, because of those things, is an incredibly fast-moving body of work academically, and it incorporates multiple fields of work including but not limited to Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology, Biology, Genetics, and medicine – all fields with their own unique ideas (and some less unique but named differently or considered slightly differently) that often never cross over. People in the past simply didn’t have access to what we are starting to learn now, and then, as now, progression is often held back by academic fields that act in silos.

In both its formulation and in it’s development as a theory, Attachment Theory has lacked access to vital information, and therefore has, and continues to lack, nuance. As I say repeatedly about the notion of ‘Theory of mind’: there is a clue in the name. Attachment theory is just that, a theory. It is neither evidenced nor proven, yet, like with many things that go out into the world and become popularised narratives, theory too often becomes truth, or fact, with that fact becoming an adopted narrative in the world of professionals who had some training once, or read a book and liked what they heard, because it neatly fit their narratives and biases. Hear something enough times and eventually it becomes a truth, especially when it ‘makes sense’. That may sound casually flippant, but it is what happens – and it has a tendency to happen in critical professional fields such as mental health and psychology, social work and education, who, despite being critical fields, have a tendency to be incredibly uncritical in the application of all sorts of things that have a huge impact on people’s lives, and tend to lean into whatever appeals to their sense of bias (#NotAllProfessionals).

Attachment Theory itself requires massive leaps and assumptions, predominantly that children generally, are effectively born empty vessels, and that attachment is constructed purely by environmental factors. Despite attachment theory being developed as a general theory of human attachment, those that have an understanding of the history of autism will recognise that phraseology. There is a famous line from Ivar Lovaas, the man responsible for developing a deeply problematic behavioural/psychological intervention (Early Intensive Behaviour Intervention) based on another equally problematic behavioural/psychological intervention called: Applied Behavioural Analysis. The line goes:

“You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child,” Lovaas writes. “You have a person in the physical sense—they have hair, a nose and a mouth—but they are not people in the psychological sense . . . You have the raw materials, but you have to build a person.”

I’m not equating attachment theory to ABA, or EIBI, but you can hopefully recognise how some of the founding principals may be similar. The thought of children as effectively blank slates that are waiting to be filled and moulded. Which, by the way, completely goes against more modern ideas around identity development, which incorporate genetics and hereditariness, alongside environmental factors, but also lean to the idea that human identity is not merely the sum of genetic inheritance and environmental influence; it is also something uniquely emergent—an unfolding process that cannot be wholly reduced to its constituent parts. While we are undeniably shaped by our biological origins and social contexts, there is an irreducible spontaneity to human personality, an aspect of selfhood that arises unpredictably, independent of deterministic inputs. And that includes and is part of how we develop attachments to others.

There are a number of philosophical and sociological academic narratives that support these ideas, and therefore undermine the weight of Attachment Theory using this ’empty vessel’ notion as a foundation.

Existentialist Perspectives
Jean-Paul Sartre’s “existence precedes essence” argument suggests that human beings are not predefined by biology or social conditioning but are fundamentally self-defining through choices and actions. His work refutes deterministic models and argues that human identity is something that is continually created, rather than merely inherited. Soren Kierkegaard also spoke to the uniqueness of individual identity, particularly in how it emerges through personal subjectivity and self-awareness rather than being solely shaped by external forces.

Gestalt Psychology & Emergent Properties
Gestalt psychology suggests that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which can be applied to identity. Personality and selfhood may emerge as properties that cannot be predicted solely from genetic or environmental factors. This in turn links to complexity theory in cognitive science, which argues that consciousness and identity arise from dynamic, self-organising processes rather than being fully determined by external factors.

“The True Self”
Donald Winnicott (a psychoanalyst) discussed the “true self” as something spontaneous and authentic, contrasting it with a “false self” that is shaped by external expectations. He suggests that while we are shaped by relationships, there is an intrinsic, self-generated aspect of identity that is not merely a response to conditioning.

Process Philosophy
Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy argued that reality, including human identity, is a continuous process of becoming rather than a fixed essence derived from past influences. Identity, in this view, is emergent and always in flux, shaped by but not reducible to prior conditions.

Quantum Mechanics & Indeterminacy in Consciousness
Though speculative, some argue that consciousness itself has an element of unpredictability and spontaneity, challenging strict determinism. Roger Penrose’s work in this area suggests that consciousness involves non-computable processes, meaning aspects of our identity may arise in ways that are not strictly governed by genetic and environmental determinism.

So there are a huge number of arguments which position this fundamental aspect of Attachment Theory as a subjective reality which is, in fact, competing against other equally (if not more so likely), arguably subjective realities.

If we were to take this aspect at face value though, who does the filling and moulding?

Well Lovaas was of the mentality that it was his role to guide the parents in that moulding and filling (after he’d finished beating and electro-shocking children), and Bowlby thought similarly (about the role of parents. I don’t think he was into abusing children like Lovaas, although there has been some suggestion of Bowlby maltreating some of his child patients).

So, if the ‘attachment’ (whatever that means), doesn’t look ‘normal’ (whatever that means), then it’s the responsibility of the primary caregiver. Oh? Where have we heard that one before? Of course, Bruno Bettelheim’s concept of the refrigerator Mother (That Autistic children are Autistic because their Mothers don’t love them enough). Parental blame, particularly against mothers, permeates social care and education narratives, especially so when it comes to Autistic children. So again, hopefully, you can see how easy it is for an uncritical adoption of a theory, or ideology, to a narrative that a professional may deem problematic because of uninformed and ignorant views. In this case especially, when one of the criticisms levelled against Attachment Theory is that Bowlby had an almost unhealthy focus on the relationship between children and their mothers, and ignored relationships between children and other caregivers. Retrospectively he took a very traditional view of parenting, that the Mother was the caregiver emotionally, fulfilling the traditional ‘mother-role’, and the Father was the caregiver financially, fulfilling the oft-absent ‘breadwinner and provider role’. At the time, perhaps that was the more normative narrative in a much more obviously Patriarchal society than the ones we live in now in westernised countries; but it makes great assumptions, even for then. As time has moved on, the roles of parents have changed and evolved significantly (I say this as someone who was a ‘stay-at-home Dad’ – it’s funny how we have a special title for that, but we don’t say ‘stay-at-home Mum’, it’s almost like misogyny and patriarchal hasn’t gone anywhere…)

Attachment Theory also makes a massive assumption around development about when a child should have developed their attachment (again, whatever that means). Effectively, if you haven’t learnt to ‘attach’ (whatever that means) by the age of two years old… Well… that’s your life ruined isn’t it. No healthy relationships for you… There was, and continues to be within it, an overemphasis on ‘Early Childhood Experiences’. Attachment Theory places significant weight on early relationships with caregivers, particularly the first two years of life. Critics have argued that this can lead to deterministic views about later social and emotional development and research suggests though that individuals can form meaningful attachments and experience relational growth throughout life, not just in infancy.

There was also, in the development of Attachment Theory, an over-Reliance on what was called the “Strange Situation” Experiment to prove it’s hypothesis.

That experiment was used to classify infants into attachment styles (secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-resistant, disorganised), and has been criticized for lacking ecological validity—it is an artificial laboratory setup and therefore is unlikely to accurately reflect natural attachment behaviours. As an argument against attachment theory within this context, some argue that children’s attachment responses can vary depending on context, temperament, or previous experiences with separation rather than fixed attachment styles.

Another issue is that much of attachment research is based on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD – a Psychological concept) populations, particularly middle-class, predominantly white, Western families. In many non-Western cultures, caregiving is distributed across multiple caregivers (e.g., extended family, siblings, community members), which challenges the assumption that a singular primary attachment figure is necessary for healthy development. For example, in Japan, children have tended to show distress in the “Strange Situation” experiment. This has been described as not necessarily due to insecure attachment, but because young children are rarely separated from caregivers within that culture. Even in the 1960’s it was accused of being ethno-centric.

As I explained above, Attachment Theory also has a limited recognition of temperament and individual differences. It assumes that the caregiver’s behaviour is the primary determinant of attachment security, but temperament research suggests that innate personality traits also play a crucial role in how children form attachments. An example of that might be that some children are just naturally more sociable, independent, or wary, which affects their attachment behaviours regardless of the caregiver sensitivity in that scenario.

Attachment Theory also falls down in the assumption that someone has a ‘style of attachment’ that is applied universally – that humans have monolith relationships with everyone – which is obviously not true. We develop all sorts of short and long term relationships with all sorts of different people. Those relationships do not look identical, as they are all contextual, and all with different people, who bring their own things to those relationships, as we respond uniquely to those relationships and their nuances. The assumption that our relationships remain unchanging is simplistic, and also really limited and problematic. The whole concept neglects later life attachments and other social factors. Critics argue that attachment theory overlooks how attachment patterns can change due to later relationships, life events, or therapeutic interventions. Social class, economic conditions, and broader socio-political factors also shape relationships, but these are not central in attachment theory at all. Their absence is glaring, particularly considering that if we are to apply this theory to Autistic children and young people, the fact that to be Autistic is hereditary and that it runs in families, means that the statistics around low employment rates mean that there is an increased likelihood that an Autistic child is going to be from a poorer economic background or lower social class.

There were also huge and grave assumptions made in it’s development that still factor now in terms of gender & heteronormative biases. As I mentioned earlier, early attachment studies were based on mother-infant dyads, reinforcing the idea that mothers are the primary and most “natural” caregivers. This marginalizes fathers, non-binary caregivers, and alternative family structures (e.g., same-sex parents, communal caregiving etc). Research now shows that fathers and other caregivers play equally important roles, challenging traditional attachment assumptions. We also have to be aware, in relation to Autistic people, that there is a massive overlap between being Autistic and being Genderqueer, and also in being Autistic and LGTBQIA+.

Within Attachment Theory there has historically been a pathologisation of non-traditional attachment styles.

Attachment theory often presents ‘secure attachment’ as the ‘ideal’, framing ‘insecure’ attachment styles as inherently problematic. However, some psychologists argue that avoidant or ambivalent attachment styles, if they exist as such, may be adaptive responses to environmental stressors, rather than signs of ‘dysfunction’. For example: A child raised in an unstable or traumatic environment may develop an ‘avoidant’ attachment style as a self-protective mechanism, which is functional in their context, but may be viewed negatively in attachment research, and applied negatively due to biases held by the diagnostician. The development of Attachment Theory did not historically factor in things like psychological safety, nor did it factor in trauma beyond the trauma it recognises (related to parental ‘failures’) in the construct of the ‘dysfunctional’ attachment style. It is a closed loop.

In terms of Autistic people, there is another potential gaping hole in the construction of Attachment Theory, especially in terms of Psychological safety.

This one is a little more speculative, and that’s because it relates to the Theory of Monotropism, and the way in which Autistic people utilise sensory processing. This video provides a brief introduction to the concept of Monotropism:

All humans use prediction models to extrapolate outcomes. It’s something we do to help reduce anxiety by anticipating what a certain situation is going to bring.

When I’ve described this before, lots of Autistic people have resonated with what I’m about to explain (This is not to say that all Autistic people will go through this process, but its fair to say anecdotally that there is potential for a significant number of Autistic to experience something similar, and I have supported/worked with/know/and been read by a significant number of Autistic people):

When I enter a situation I have what feels like a cascade effect go through my brain in a split-second, where all the permutations of all the possible outcomes of every scenario that might happen play out. Then, my brain seems to latch onto the most likely ones and often develops a script based on that.

For Autistic people, even Autistic babies, who have experienced a level of negative occurrence (usually for them at that age mostly around sensory needs and how those are unwittingly invalidated, at this point in development) what’s extrapolated and monotropically hooked onto is likely to be tainted with negativity. If you have negative experiences, negative experiences become the expected. You generally expect and have less, if any, psychological safety. You don’t feel safe.

How might that feed into how you form attachments?

Secondary to this, related to sensory processing, and definitely related to psychological/felt-safety, is the concept of what my colleague and friend, Australian advocate Kristy Forbes, calls ‘plugging in’. We often talk about the 8 senses (touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing, vestibular, proprioception, and interoception), but the senses fall foul of that humans tendency to categorise things into individual boxes. There aren’t 8 clean and clear individual processes. They all work collectively, overlap, and react with each other, and to each other. It is a collaborative group effort to interpret sensory information, but there are also in-between processes that aren’t named. Back when we thought there were only 5 senses (yes there was a time – see how things evolve!), there was talk of a mystical sixth sense. Now I am not about to start talking about telekinesis or mind reading (I’ll leave the latter to Simon Baron-Cohen), but humans do have a communication sense based around energy fields. All things have electrical energy fields, and we communicate with those electrical fields subliminally, reading and interacting with them without consciously realising. Kristy’s notion of ‘plugging in’ utilizes the idea that, for Autistic people seeking Psychological safety, who are looking to feel safe, we might look to plug into a familiar, safe-feeling electrical field given off by a safe person, like a caregiver.

And if we can’t find one…?

How much safe energy is there to plug into in, say, a school environment, where there are multitudes of environmental and systemic factors that might make you feel unsafe, or harm you. Where the people in those environments are the ones curating it..?

Now, to me, this stands to reason, as Autistic people seem to have a wholly different relationship with sensory processing than non-Autistic people. When I train on Monotropism, I often describe the use of sensory information as fuel for human beings attention. For Polytropic people who can move their attention around easily, and aren’t as invested attention-wise, that fuel is petrol, fuel efficient for short bursts. For a Monotropic person who attends deeply, the fuel is utilized like diesel, fuel efficient for long journeys.

So if a different relationship is being had with sensory processing, then a different relationship with safe energy is going to exist.

And especially (going full circle back to Monotropic extrapolation and Safety in Predictability) if your brain has had those negative experiences and uses them to form predictive models. If you are looking to sensorially plug into a familiar feeling Island of Safety, and you can’t. It stands to reason that all this is going to have an impact on the way you form attachments.

Did Bowlby (or anyone later) incorporate any of these notions into Attachment Theory? Of course not, technically, in reference to monotropism and ‘plugging-in’ these ideas weren’t around at the time, and outside of Autistic academia, and more broadly within the Autistic community, these concepts don’t exist in the mainstream even now. My point is again though, if something fundamental is excluded, whether wittingly or unwittingly, it means the concept doing the excluding is fundamentally weak. All psychological theory is subject to change of course, but they are often not treated as something that expects to evolve and change, they become applied theories, and then when things are updated, those updates aren’t seen, because nobody is looking for them, because they’ve already become applied. They’re ‘facts’.

Still on the subject of psychological safety, there have also been very few questions asked around the relationship between Attachment Theory and masking. Not just Autistic masking, but considering masking as something experienced by all sorts of marginalised groups and people.

If you think you know what masking is, there’s a good possibility that you actually don’t, even if you’re an academic. Professionally, like with many Autistic-experience related things, it is more often the case of what professionals think they know, rather than what they actually know; and many of the academic and popularised narratives around masking are also, guess what, theories, some of them incredibly limited and deeply flawed.

I’m not going into the depths of what masking is here (believe me, that’s painful for me, because identity development, stigma and masking are some of my core interests), but you can pay a visit to lots of free resources about it on this page: Autistic Masking, and learn about the fact that contrary to popular belief not all humans mask (at least not in the sense of what Autistic Masking is), but all humans have the potential to mask if they experience stigma, trauma and marginalisation.

If you’re really interested in understanding masking better, you can go read this book, co-Authored between myself and Assistant Professor of Developmental Psychology, Dr Amy Pearson, from Durham University; where we explore the different masking narratives, set the context out and look at the role stigma plays in identity development and identity managemen, particularly through an intersectional lens: AUTISTIC MASKING – Understanding Identity Management and the Role of Stigma

The really important point is that as Masking is an unconscious, developmental, safety-seeking response to stigma and traumas of all forms within interpersonal and environmental contexts, experienced by marginalised groups. It involves anticipating to the expectations of those with power within those contexts, and projecting an expected version of self within those contexts to meet the power-holder’s needs(however that may look).

Attachment attempts to describe the unconscious bonds that form within interpersonal relationships, so you’d think that there may be a relationship between the two dichotomies. But no, still no. And this again, is why Attachment Theory falls short.

Masking is a key component of Autistic experience, yet… nothing… So what we see when we describe ‘Attachments’ might not be the reality of what’s happening. What we think, what we see, and what is actually occurring, might not be the same thing. Especially if what we think is fuelled by bias and limited information.

There has also been an insufficient consideration of neurodivergence more broadly. The definition I use to explain a neurodivergent person (which again, you can read here in (‘What is Neurodiversity‘) is:

“Neurodivergence describes individuals whose way of communicating, processing, perceiving, moving, and interacting, diverges from what might be considered ‘typical’ in a multitude of ways. If Neurotypical means to lean into societal expectations, then Neurodivergence means to lean out of societal expectations.”

Attachment research often assumes typical social and emotional development. But obviously, in respect of that definition, many neurodivergent people may express attachment differently. As one potential example, of one aspect of how one of many variations of Neurodivergence may present, an Autistic child could show ‘secure’ attachment through parallel play, sensory seeking, or intense interests rather than traditional eye contact or proximity-seeking behaviours. This challenges neurotypical norms embedded in attachment assessments. But, of course, the development of attachment theory has been soaked in the historical pathologised narratives of autism that still plague us to this day with every the application of nearly every psychological theory. If your concepts are based, or riff off of a deeply flawed and superficial narrative, that means your concepts are also deeply flawed and superficial.

Lastly, Attachment Theory has also been used as a rationale for the use of gay conversion therapy and kink shaming in therapeutic practice. So that’s nice… Not…

Overall, Attachment Theory is blatantly subjective and falls apart at the simplest of poking. And it’s application, if not done critically, adaptively, undismissively, thoughtfully, and with a great deal of curiosity, has the potential to cause great harm.

While it has made important contributions to the understanding of human relationships, its limitations in cultural diversity, later-life influences, neurodivergence, and social factors highlight the need for a more flexible, context-sensitive approach to attachment and human connection. Or, in plain English, it’s a limited idea utilised by (often) biased people with limited knowledge, who wield great power; and its an idea that is too often applied very quickly and uncritically to people, young and old, who require an application of knowledge, curiosity and nuance. Instead it’s just too often thrown at anything that’s deemed ‘problematic’ in children, particularly in relation to ‘behaviour’ and emotion.

In relation to this theory being applied by services and Professionals onto Autistic people, I often see people (mostly autistic parents and autistic professionals) providing an evidence base to other professionals as to why a popular theory is problematic (it isn’t always attachment theory, plenty of other problematic theories exist!). Or offering the idea that there might be a bigger picture, a broader or different context, where the application of a popular theory might be incorrect, or even harmful.

In response, I often see those same Autistic people get totally shot down (usually because that professional is very invested in the theory to the point where a challenge to it triggers huge defensiveness). If that’s the case with you, and you have the privilege to do so, I would question how right that professional and their viewpoint is for you, your child, your partner, your pupil etc, and extract yourself from that relationship. Lean into an avoidant attachment style with them.

Any professional doggedly clinging to an ideology without being able to be critically reflective of it, is probably not a safe professional.

It is a very Autistic thing to want to provide logic and evidence to an illogical and unevidenced context, because why wouldn’t someone want to logically and evidentially know why they are wrong? That makes senses right? Unfortunately in the face of logic and evidence, professionals heavily invested in narratives like these too often double down. It becomes almost personal for them to be right, and feels like an attack on their professionalism that a ‘lay person’ might know better (Again #NotAllProfessionals).

In light of all this, it is also important to reiterate that concepts like attachment theory, as I mentioned previously often feed bias in professional circles, particularly in social care and education. In these fields the people applying these theories often have a watered down understanding of them, so don’t know to be critical or how to be even if they did. Often the application serves the purpose of the biases of the applicator or the system they work within, in context to social care and education, that tends to come with a behavioural management flavour which centres any issues with it’s processes as the fault of the person accessing, not the way the system was designed and delivered. Non-conforming children with parents who lack parenting skills is an easy narrative that externalises problems outside of the system, meaning the system has no need to self reflect, learn and change – it’s god-like and infallible. Theories like Attachment Theory can play into those narratives and can and do become a mechanism for them.

There are a large number of academic pieces that are highly critical of attachment theory generally:
Google Scholar – Attachment Theory Criticisms

And there are barely any academic criticisms of attachment theory in relation to being Autistic, unfortunately – so its one of those many cases where, in order to build a case against something, or at least provide a foundation from which to be critical of a thing, you have to breadcrumb in order to build a picture in opposition – there is plenty of evidence, underpinned by double empathy, for arguing a case for someone experiencing different emotional experiences, social motivations, sensory experiences, communication, different (and importantly) unrecognised co-occurring conditions, cultural differences; reframing behaviours based on trauma, distress and autonomous nervous system responses; distinct consistent and extensive unmet need, and recognising the impact of a lack of felt-safety consistently.

We also have to be careful that when we argue against a problematic concept, we try not to use a defence that further stigmatises the very thing we are trying to protect. I found an article which helpfully attempts to separate Autistic experience from that defined by a disorder narrative of Attachment Theory but it does it really, really badly. rather than debunking Attachment Theory itself, it offers a comparison, which a) infers that Attachment Theory exists as a fact, and b) doesn’t compare the two things at all, because what it says about Autistic people is deeply flawed and limited. For example:

The author of this article has a completely outdated understanding of Autistic experience.

It is basically saying that we’re going to describe the difference between something we don’t understand very well, and something that doesn’t exist. What’s scary and (to me at least) unsurprising is that this article is on the website of a leading ‘autism charity’.

It is clearly an article written with good intention. What’s that saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? What is given with the one hand, is firmly snatched away by the other:

Buried in these screenshots are some of the greatest myths and stereotypes around Autistic people known to man. We can’t lie, we can’t perspective take, our caregivers are angels and universally loved (This is one of the reasons that there is such a high instances of abuse among Autistic children, because there is a general historical underlying assumption that Autistic children are to blame for any adverse experiences. Almost like we have it coming to us…), our relationship with food is solely sensory, we don’t have imaginations… It goes on…

I could go on too! But I won’t.

If you’d like to understand Autistic experience better and need help to unpick some of what’s written there, you could start by reading my article: ‘What is autism?‘ and follow up with it’s partner article: ‘What is Neurodiversity?‘

In short, while Attachment Theory might be useful in some respects, and has contributed somewhat to furthering our understanding of development and relationships, it is deeply flawed and applicable potentially harmful.

Beyond all this, for any Professional reading this, I have to mention that maybe, just maybe, at a basic level, attachment in an Autistic child or adult, if you do insist on focusing on it, might look different. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there, or that it’s broken, or not fully developed. Maybe you need to see instead of just look. The two are not the same thing. That maybe there are other, less simplistic reasons for someone to be emotionally dysregulated, for someone to behave in a certain way? That maybe relationship development might be problematic for an Autistic person, not because it’s always their fault, but maybe, just maybe, we can look to the evidence of the rates of interpersonal victimisation experienced by Autistic people and see that they are phenomenally high, even from very early childhood? None of this is to absolve Autistic people (or their caregivers) from developing into who they are, but to shine a light on the fact that Autistic people are commonly viewed as problematic because they are Autistic, and other people and broader society tends to exclude and punish Autistic people for being Autistic.

Where is all this empathy that non-Autistic people insist they have? This video on the concept of double empathy might help answer this question and underpin the issues with Attachment Theory:

There are a whole world of people out there who think they understand what it means to be Autistic, based on outdated concepts, and a normative idea of development. If that’s you, how would you know? Maybe asking that question is a better starting place than uncritically adopting a narrative that may cause harms that you are completely unaware of.

Finally, I am very open to the thought that there may be a core narrative of truth buried within Attachment Theory, at least I am happy to explore it, or be shown ideas about it. But the fundamental argument I am making here is to be critical of it. Be critical of everything. Explore the concept that there may be things that you are not privy to, which might open up a whole new load of doors. None of this is a criticism of the ‘idea’ of attachment, of course that exists, but how we have conceptualised, how we apply what we conceptualise and how we weaponize it against people made vulnerable by systems and circumstance, it is up for heavy criticism.

We can’t know what we don’t know, but we can certainly be curious and open to the possibly that we don’t know everything, even if we think we do…

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Autistic Masking and Attachment

Here’s a Q&A I hosted with Autistic Parents UK in 2024 on the topic of Attachment

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