Concept
The dynamic-maturational model of attachment and adaptation (DMM) is a biopsychosocial model describing the effect attachment relationships can have on human development and functioning. It is especially focused on the effects of relationships between children and parents and between reproductive couples. It developed initially from attachment theory as developed by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, and incorporated many other theories into a comprehensive model of adaptation to life's many dangers. 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. A main tenet of the DMM is that exposure to danger drives neural development and adaptation to promote survival. Danger includes relationship danger. In DMM-attachment theory, when a person needs protection or comfort from danger from a person with whom they have a protective relationship, the nature of the relationship generates relation-specific self-protective strategies. These are patterns of behavior which include the underlying neural processing. The DMM protective strategies describe aspects of the parent–child relationship, romantic relationships, and to a degree, relationships between patients/clients and long-term helping professionals. Out of the development of attachment theory, British psychiatrist John Bowlby coalesced a coherent theory and is generally credited with creating the foundation for modern attachment theory. Mary Ainsworth, an American-Canadian psychologist, started working with Bowlby in 1950. Ainsworth completed her doctoral thesis in 1940 under William Blatz, who had developed security theory, a precursor to attachment theory. Blatz believed the core nature of the relationship between a (to use his colloquial terms) mother and child involved the development of a trusted and secure relationship to function as a safe base for a child's need to explore.