The DMM was initially created by developmental psychologist Patricia McKinsey Crittenden and her colleagues including David DiLalla, Angelika Claussen, Andrea Landini, Steve Farnfield, and Susan Spieker.
This set an initial foundation for the developing theory of attachment as involving a two-pattern model, security vs insecurity, centered on safety and play.
Ainsworth's graduate students, including Mary Main and Patricia "Pat" Crittenden, made important developments to attachment science and theory.
He argued that common psychological defense mechanisms were actually efforts to keep certain types of unwanted information out of one's mind during experiences and while considering issues and making decisions.
Crittenden centered her work on how humans develop self-protective strategies and patterns of information processing in the context of danger.
As a system centered on survival, it also involves a person's need to increase reproductive opportunities and protect progeny.
[2] An optimal attachment figure is sensitively attuned and responsive to the person's communications and needs[19] and encourages curiosity and the exploration of new information.
Maturational and changeable: DMM-attachment recognizes that humans are able to utilize more and more sophisticated self-protective attachment strategies as they age.
Infants begin with instinctive strategies such as smiling and reaching, and through behavioral learning develop an increasing array of ways to gain protection from danger from their caregivers.
A person using C-strategies may focus on satisfying their own feelings to the exclusion of cooperation and conflict resolution even to the detriment of their children or financial interests.
Higher C-even patterns can involve increasing amounts of rage which may escape notice because of simultaneous exaggeration of innocence and vulnerability.
Eight memory systems assessed by the DMM method are body talk, somatic, procedural, semantic, imaged, connotative, episodic, and reflective integration.
Unlike the ICI which assesses only dyadic synchrony under the favorable condition of play, the SSP uses threat to elicit the infant's pattern of attachment.
[52] In the DMM, this problem was resolved by limiting the age range to 11–15 months,[53] and developing, with Ainsworth's assistance, an alternating A/C classification and pre-compulsive and pre-coercive patterns.
[58][59] The SAA involves an audio recorded interview which is transcribed and analyzed with discourse analysis techniques, for children aged 6–13 years.
The assessment involves asking a person a series of structured questions, transcribing the audio recording, and applying a complex set of discourse analysis techniques.
[32] The coding manual for the DMM-AAI is Assessing Adult Attachment: A Dynamic-Maturational Approach to Discourse Analysis (2011) and is publicly available.
In a validation study, the way parents talked about their children in the MotC was found to predict how they behaved with their child in a CARE-Index video.
[86] DMM perspectives on attachment and information processing are useful for understanding neglectful and harmful parenting,[87] domestic violence[88] and criminal behavior.
Two large studies, which Kozlowska relied on, found a strong association between low quality attachment relationships and functional somatic symptoms later in life.
[90][91] Kozlowska's own research showed children with functional neurological disorders (FND) almost universally used higher attachment strategies (A3-4, A5-6, C3-4, and C5-6).
Kozlowska[94][17] describes incorporating occupational therapy with pediatric medicine, hypnosis, physiotherapy, neurology, and DMM-Attachment theory.
They can also address Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), which she found almost always involved children's use of higher DMM self-protective strategies.
DMM theory helps integrate different modalities around the concepts of protection from danger, the impact of interpersonal relationships and family environments, and the use of transitional attachment figures.
[98] In an Arizona State University dissertation paper, Taggart described how occupational therapists can use Éadaoin Bhreathnach's Sensory Attachment Intervention (SAI) approach, which is informed by the DMM, together with trauma and polyvagal theory informed perspectives, to help children improve emotional expression.
It uses the DMM, the DMM-AAI, and incorporates other models such as an attachment-based modification of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and rational emotive behavior therapy.
[158] Both find the most effective attachment-informed interventions in family problems is to focus on improving sensitivity of the child's primary caretaker.
[8] The ABC+D model was widely accepted by the research community from about 1990–2017, although Main was calling for caution in the use of disorganized attachment in clinical and forensic settings by at least 2011.
Reification involves making something abstract concrete, turning an attachment strategy used in one situation into what completely defines the person.
He echoes common concerns that attachment, and the DMM in particular, is such a powerful model it is potentially easy to fall into the use of counterproductive shortcuts.