... to regulate our own emotional reactions. A dyadic regulatory system evolves where the infants' signals of moment to moment changes in their state that are understood and responded to by the caregiver thereby achieving their regulation. The infant learns that arousal in the presence of the caregiver will not lead to disorganisation beyond his coping capabilities. The caregiver will be there to re-establish equilibrium. In states of uncontrollable arousal, the infant will come to seek physical proximity to the caregiver in the hope of soothing and the recovery of homeostasis. The infant's behaviour by the end of the first year is purposeful, and apparently based on specific expectations. His past experiences with the caregiver are aggregated into representational systems which Bowlby (1973) termed 'internal working models'. Thus, the attachment system is an open bio-social homeostatic regulatory system. Patterns of attachment in infancy The second great pioneer of attachment theory, Mary Ainsworth (1969; ...

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