Strange Situation

A full-scale investigation of the controversial and often misunderstood science of attachment theory, inspired by the author's own experience as a parent and daughter.

When award-winning editor, writer, researcher, and longtime Zen student Bethany Saltman gave birth to her daughter, Azalea, she felt like there was something 'off' about her experience. She knew she loved her daughter, but would oftentimes be angry, short on patience, even unkind. She went in search of the reasons why, and how to better understand herself, her daughter, and their relationship.

With the intensity of her spiritual pursuits, Saltman launched a broad inquiry into the science of attachment, a field of developmental psychology that answers the question of why - from an evolutionary point of view - love exists between parents and children. Specifically, Saltman focused on the data from a famous laboratory procedure, the 'Strange Situation', used around the world by scientists as the gold standard for measuring attachment security. A child and caregiver enter a room with two chairs and ordinary toys. Through a series of orchestrated comings and goings, the nature of the pair's relationship is revealed. What Saltman saw by studying the Strange Situation is that love is unbreakable. Each and every one of us - including her - is built for it.

In this intimate, rigorous, and deeply personal rendering, Saltman boldly asks science to answer to love, and discovers that while our behaviour as parents is important, attachment research insists that what matters most is the way we think about our attachments, transmitted mind to mind from generation to generation. This is excellent news. After all, as Saltman's decades of Zen practice tell her and her readers, the one thing completely within our power to change is our minds.

Readers will also be given the tools with which to interpret and better understand their own relationships. More than just a memoir or biography,Strange Situationoffers fresh insight into the intersection of psychology and spirituality.

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