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The Social Network, Support and Neurosis

The Function of Attachment in Adult Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Scott Henderson
Scott Henderson*
Affiliation:
National Health and Medical Research Council Social Psychiatry Research Unit, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
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Summary

The psychological function of the social network is considered in terms of attachment theory. Social bonds are proposed as essential for obtaining a commodity commonly but unsatisfactorily referred to as support. Requirements for this complex commodity can be discerned in a wide range of contexts. Examples considered are the evolutionary origin of the social network itself, the concept of psychosocial supplies, the distribution of neurosis in Western and non-Western populations, the use of medical consultations, psychotherapy and habitual responses to adversity or disaster. In these and other contexts, it is apparent that individuals have, quite simply, a requirement for affectively positive interaction with others. Under stressful conditions this interaction is called ‘support’. When support is lacking there is evidence that psychiatric and perhaps medical morbidity rates increase. For research, the objective must now be to determine whether depleted primary group interaction is causally related to morbidity, or whether it is only an associated or a secondary factor in aetiology, or indeed wholly unrelated. Elucidating more precisely why people need people constitutes an important new task for social psychiatry.

‘Thank you for your support; I shall wear it at all times.’

Neddy Seagoon in The Goon Show

(Spike Milligan, 1959)

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 131 , Issue 2 , August 1977 , pp. 185 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 1977 

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