Henry Steele
Biographic Data
| ID | 714941 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Henry Steele |
| GIVEN NAMES | Henry |
| FAMILY NAME | Steele |
| SIGNATURE | STEELE H |
| AFFILIATIONS | New School |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5371-2560 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 70 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1959 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Attachment theory and research
Attachment theory is one of the core theories proposed for child and family social work, but concerns have been raised regarding misunderstandings and misapplications. Misinformation about attachment is widespread, and texts and teaching on attachment theory often emphasise aspects of the theory that have limited value for applied practice while other elements with greater practice value are often overlooked. As an international group of social w…
Practitioner Review
Attachment theory, with its core concepts, perspectives, and insights developed over the past five decades, is influential for professionals working with young children. However, practitioners face challenges translating attachment theory and research into practical applications. This manifests in attachment myths, theoretical misinterpretations, and inconsistency of application. This state‐of‐the‐art review is authored by 47 attachment researche…
Configurations of mother–child and father–child attachment relationships as predictors of child language competence
An individual participant data meta-analysis was conducted to test pre-registered hypotheses about how the configuration of attachment relationships to mothers and fathers predicts children's language competence. Data from seven studies (published between 1985 and 2014) including 719 children (M age: 19.84 months; 51% female; 87% White) were included in the linear mixed effects analyses. Mean language competence scores exceeded the population ave…
Attachment Stability and Longitudinal Prediction of Psychotic-like Symptoms in Community Adolescents over Four Months of Covid-19 Pandemic
Background: The Friends and Family Interview (FFI) is assumed to be a valid method to study attachment stability and attachment-related psychopathological processes in adolescence, but no studies have yet tested the test–retest reliability of this interview or the longitudinal association of attachment patterns in response to the FFI from adolescents with symptoms such as psychotic-like experiences (e.g., hallucinations, bizarre behavior, dissoci…
A Road Map for Navigating Next Steps in the Study of Attachment in Middle Childhood
Expressed emotion and reflective functioning across the schizotypy spectrum
A society that values it's children should cherish their parents
This comment on the Special Issue contributions regarding the attachment network addresses the clinical implications of the findings from three perspectives: (1) the need to look beyond maternal influences on child developmental outcomes; (2) to be open to every seemingly peripheral influence on the child as this may have a central impact on the child, for example, grandmothers, the parental couple relationship, and others not living in the child…
Factor structure of the Friends and Family interview
The aim of this study was to specify the latent construct structure of the Friends and Family Interview (FFI: Steele & Steele, 2005) based on its dimensional scale coding protocol. The FFI is a semi‐structured interview measuring attachment in middle childhood. We analyzed data from 341 FFI interviews with children aged 7–12 years, recruited in the Scandinavian Öresund Region. Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed a three‐component model as best f…
Attachment & Child Health (Attach) pilot trials
Toxic stressors (e.g., parental violence, depression, low income) place children at risk for insecure attachment. Parental reflective function—parents’ capacity to understand their own and their child's mental states and thus regulate their own feelings and behavior toward their child—may buffer the negative effects of toxic stress on attachment. Our objective was to test the effectiveness of the Attachment and Child Health (ATTACH) intervention,…
Tracing the Footsteps of a Psychoanalytic Master
Disorganized attachment in infancy
Disorganized/Disoriented (D) attachment has seen widespread interest from policy makers, practitioners, and clinicians in recent years. However, some of this interest seems to have been based on some false assumptions that (1) attachment measures can be used as definitive assessments of the individual in forensic/child protection settings and that disorganized attachment (2) reliably indicates child maltreatment, (3) is a strong predictor of path…
Reflective functioning in postpartum depressed women with and without comorbid personality disorder
Mentalization or Reflective Functioning (RF), that is, the ability to reflect upon ones' own and others behavior in terms of underlying mental states, plays an important role in parenting behavior and children's socioemotional development. RF has been suggested to be impaired in psychopathology, and thus maternal psychopathology after birth, such as postpartum depression (PPD) and Personality Disorder (PD), may not only affect the mother's socioe…
Adolescents Conceived through Donor Insemination in Mother‐Headed Families
This study interviewed adolescents conceived using sperm donation to examine their experiences of contacting and meeting ‘same‐donor offspring’ (i.e. donor‐conceived offspring raised in different families who share the same donor), their motivations for this contact, and how they make meaning of these relationships. This in‐depth qualitative study involved semi‐structured interviews with 23 young people aged 12–19 years (mean = 14 years). Intervi…
Effectiveness of school-based mental health playgroups for diagnosable and at-risk preschool children
Risk factors during preschool years, such as poverty and unattended social/emotional problems, are known to have a strong negative influence on children's later functioning. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of an on-site integrated school-based mental health services and consultation program for preschool children and their families. The sample consisted of 47 children and parents in 3 childcare centers who came from low-socioeco…
Adverse childhood experiences, poverty, and parenting stress.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with physical and mental health problems in adulthood, as well as unresolved or discordant states of mind regarding attachments that have implications for problematic parenting. Currently, there are no studies on the association between ACEs and adults' subjective experiences of stress in the parenting role, where socioeconomic status (SES)−related poverty effects have been controlled for--the c…
Maternal Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) Collected During Pregnancy Predicts Reflective Functioning in AAIs from their First-Born Children 17 Years Later
This paper reports on the longitudinal links between first-time mothers ( N = 48) Adult Attachment Interviews (AAIs), provided during pregnancy, and their first-born children’s AAIs, provided at age 16 years. The AAIs from the adolescents were scored for reflective functioning (RF), and this was found to be significantly linked to whether their mothers’ AAI were appraised as free-autonomous/secure as opposed to insecure-dismissing. Discussion con…
Quality of life among South African patients receiving antiretroviral therapy in the Western Cape Province
Compared to patients not receiving treatment, antiretroviral therapy users may experience a lower viral load, an increased CD4 count, slower disease progression, fewer opportunistic infections, and more rapid recovery time from HIV-related illnesses. As such, health-related quality of life is likely to be considerably greater for antiretroviral therapy users than for patients not receiving treatment. The dearth of quality of life research in sub-…
Group Attachment-Based Intervention
This article outlines the main premises of an innovative trauma-informed intervention, group attachment-based intervention, specifically developed to target vulnerable families with infants and toddlers, living in one of the poorest urban counties in the nation. It also reports on the trauma-relevant characteristics of 60 families entering a clinical trial to study the effectiveness of Group Attachment-Based Intervention. Initial survey results r…
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Questionnaire and Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)
Reflective Functioning Scale
Children's play narratives
Play narratives can offer a unique insight into the child's internal world. This study compared the play narratives of children in 38 lesbian-mother families; 73 two-parent, heterosexual-mother families; and 58 single-heterosexual-mother families recruited from a general population sample. Findings indicated positive mother-child relationships and well-adjusted children. Girls' narratives showed more affection than boys' and were more strongly as…
The role of attachment security, temperament, maternal perception, and care‐giving behavior in persistent infant sleeping problems
This study investigates the relationship of etiological factors to infant sleeping problems during the first year, and at follow‐up during the second year of life. The relevant factors for concurrent sleeping problems (in order of importance) were problematic maternal cognition concerning setting limits on the infant, fussy–difficult infant temperament, maternal anxiety–depression, ambivalent attachment, and certain maternal care‐giving behaviors…
Attachment in anorexia nervosa
Both clinical and empirical studies suggest that insecure attachment is common in eating disordered populations. Clinical studies have addressed mother‐daughter interactions, but there has been little empirical research into the mother's own attachment patterns and whether there might be intergenerational transmission of these patterns. We aimed to examine the attachment status of patients with severe anorexia nervosa and their mothers, using the…
Infant‐Mother Attachment at One Year Predicts Children’s Understanding of Mixed Emotions at Six Years
Data from the six‐year follow up of a longitudinal study investigating intergenerational patterns of attachment and the effects of early relationships upon subsequent social, emotional and cognitive development are presented. Around the time of their sixth birthday, 63 children participated in an affect understanding task, involving cartoon diagrams depicting social and emotional dilemmas. As predicted, performance on this task, assessed in terms…
Response to Cassidy, Lyons‐Ruth and Bretherton
Measuring the Ghost In the Nursery
This paper presents a summary of the Anna Freud Centre-University College London, Parent-Child Project. Its most important finding was that the security of the infants' relationship with both parents at 12 and 18 months could be predicted on the basis of qualitative aspects of the parents' accounts of their own childhoods collected before the birth of the child. This confirmed Selma Fraiberg's observations concerning the reemergence of childhood …
Infant‐Mother Attachment at One Year Predicts Children’s Understanding of Mixed Emotions at Six Years
Data from the six‐year follow up of a longitudinal study investigating intergenerational patterns of attachment and the effects of early relationships upon subsequent social, emotional and cognitive development are presented. Around the time of their sixth birthday, 63 children participated in an affect understanding task, involving cartoon diagrams depicting social and emotional dilemmas. As predicted, performance on this task, assessed in terms…
Measuring locus of control
This paper attempts a critical review not so much of the concept of locus of control as the plethora of unidimensional or sphere-specific measures that have been developed in the past 25 years. After a brief history of the development of the concept of locus of control, various oft-repeated and some new criticisms are considered. One frequent response to problems associated with the original concept and scale has been to develop new psychometrica…
The role of attachment security, temperament, maternal perception, and care‐giving behavior in persistent infant sleeping problems
This study investigates the relationship of etiological factors to infant sleeping problems during the first year, and at follow‐up during the second year of life. The relevant factors for concurrent sleeping problems (in order of importance) were problematic maternal cognition concerning setting limits on the infant, fussy–difficult infant temperament, maternal anxiety–depression, ambivalent attachment, and certain maternal care‐giving behaviors…
Attachment and Psychoanalysis
Attachment & Child Health (Attach) pilot trials
Toxic stressors (e.g., parental violence, depression, low income) place children at risk for insecure attachment. Parental reflective function—parents’ capacity to understand their own and their child's mental states and thus regulate their own feelings and behavior toward their child—may buffer the negative effects of toxic stress on attachment. Our objective was to test the effectiveness of the Attachment and Child Health (ATTACH) intervention,…
Attachment in anorexia nervosa
Both clinical and empirical studies suggest that insecure attachment is common in eating disordered populations. Clinical studies have addressed mother‐daughter interactions, but there has been little empirical research into the mother's own attachment patterns and whether there might be intergenerational transmission of these patterns. We aimed to examine the attachment status of patients with severe anorexia nervosa and their mothers, using the…
Quality of life among South African patients receiving antiretroviral therapy in the Western Cape Province
Compared to patients not receiving treatment, antiretroviral therapy users may experience a lower viral load, an increased CD4 count, slower disease progression, fewer opportunistic infections, and more rapid recovery time from HIV-related illnesses. As such, health-related quality of life is likely to be considerably greater for antiretroviral therapy users than for patients not receiving treatment. The dearth of quality of life research in sub-…
The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900-1912
Journal Article The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900–1912. By George E. Mowry. The New American Nation Series. Edited by Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958. xviii+ 330 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $5.00.) Get access Dewey W. Grantham, Jr. Dewey W. Grantham, Jr. Vanderbilt University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American Histo…
The Fortunes of Economic Reform Legislation
Books in review
Maternal Representations of Attachment during Pregnancy Predict the Organization of Infant-Mother Attachment at One Year of Age
Peter Fonagy, Howard Steele, Miriam Steele, Maternal Representations of Attachment during Pregnancy Predict the Organization of Infant-Mother Attachment at One Year of Age, Child Development, Vol. 62, No. 5 (Oct., 1991), pp. 891-905
The capacity for understanding mental states
Epidemiologists and psychoanalysts have been equally concerned about the intergenera-tional concordance of disturbed patterns of attachment. Mary Main's introduction of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) has provided the field with an empirical tool for examining the concordance of parental and infant attachment patterns. In the context of a prospective study of the influence of parental patterns of attachment assessed before the birth of the f…
Measuring the Ghost In the Nursery
This paper presents a summary of the Anna Freud Centre-University College London, Parent-Child Project. Its most important finding was that the security of the infants' relationship with both parents at 12 and 18 months could be predicted on the basis of qualitative aspects of the parents' accounts of their own childhoods collected before the birth of the child. This confirmed Selma Fraiberg's observations concerning the reemergence of childhood …
Measuring locus of control
This paper attempts a critical review not so much of the concept of locus of control as the plethora of unidimensional or sphere-specific measures that have been developed in the past 25 years. After a brief history of the development of the concept of locus of control, various oft-repeated and some new criticisms are considered. One frequent response to problems associated with the original concept and scale has been to develop new psychometrica…
Associations among Attachment Classifications of Mothers, Fathers, and Their Infants
The relation of attachment status, psychiatric classification, and response to psychotherapy.
Response to Cassidy, Lyons‐Ruth and Bretherton
Attachment and Psychoanalysis
Infant‐Mother Attachment at One Year Predicts Children’s Understanding of Mixed Emotions at Six Years
Data from the six‐year follow up of a longitudinal study investigating intergenerational patterns of attachment and the effects of early relationships upon subsequent social, emotional and cognitive development are presented. Around the time of their sixth birthday, 63 children participated in an affect understanding task, involving cartoon diagrams depicting social and emotional dilemmas. As predicted, performance on this task, assessed in terms…
Attachment in anorexia nervosa
Both clinical and empirical studies suggest that insecure attachment is common in eating disordered populations. Clinical studies have addressed mother‐daughter interactions, but there has been little empirical research into the mother's own attachment patterns and whether there might be intergenerational transmission of these patterns. We aimed to examine the attachment status of patients with severe anorexia nervosa and their mothers, using the…
The role of attachment security, temperament, maternal perception, and care‐giving behavior in persistent infant sleeping problems
This study investigates the relationship of etiological factors to infant sleeping problems during the first year, and at follow‐up during the second year of life. The relevant factors for concurrent sleeping problems (in order of importance) were problematic maternal cognition concerning setting limits on the infant, fussy–difficult infant temperament, maternal anxiety–depression, ambivalent attachment, and certain maternal care‐giving behaviors…
Children's play narratives
Play narratives can offer a unique insight into the child's internal world. This study compared the play narratives of children in 38 lesbian-mother families; 73 two-parent, heterosexual-mother families; and 58 single-heterosexual-mother families recruited from a general population sample. Findings indicated positive mother-child relationships and well-adjusted children. Girls' narratives showed more affection than boys' and were more strongly as…
Reflective Functioning Scale
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Questionnaire and Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)
Group Attachment-Based Intervention
This article outlines the main premises of an innovative trauma-informed intervention, group attachment-based intervention, specifically developed to target vulnerable families with infants and toddlers, living in one of the poorest urban counties in the nation. It also reports on the trauma-relevant characteristics of 60 families entering a clinical trial to study the effectiveness of Group Attachment-Based Intervention. Initial survey results r…
Adverse childhood experiences, poverty, and parenting stress.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with physical and mental health problems in adulthood, as well as unresolved or discordant states of mind regarding attachments that have implications for problematic parenting. Currently, there are no studies on the association between ACEs and adults' subjective experiences of stress in the parenting role, where socioeconomic status (SES)−related poverty effects have been controlled for--the c…
Maternal Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) Collected During Pregnancy Predicts Reflective Functioning in AAIs from their First-Born Children 17 Years Later
This paper reports on the longitudinal links between first-time mothers ( N = 48) Adult Attachment Interviews (AAIs), provided during pregnancy, and their first-born children’s AAIs, provided at age 16 years. The AAIs from the adolescents were scored for reflective functioning (RF), and this was found to be significantly linked to whether their mothers’ AAI were appraised as free-autonomous/secure as opposed to insecure-dismissing. Discussion con…
Quality of life among South African patients receiving antiretroviral therapy in the Western Cape Province
Compared to patients not receiving treatment, antiretroviral therapy users may experience a lower viral load, an increased CD4 count, slower disease progression, fewer opportunistic infections, and more rapid recovery time from HIV-related illnesses. As such, health-related quality of life is likely to be considerably greater for antiretroviral therapy users than for patients not receiving treatment. The dearth of quality of life research in sub-…
Disorganized attachment in infancy
Disorganized/Disoriented (D) attachment has seen widespread interest from policy makers, practitioners, and clinicians in recent years. However, some of this interest seems to have been based on some false assumptions that (1) attachment measures can be used as definitive assessments of the individual in forensic/child protection settings and that disorganized attachment (2) reliably indicates child maltreatment, (3) is a strong predictor of path…
Reflective functioning in postpartum depressed women with and without comorbid personality disorder
Mentalization or Reflective Functioning (RF), that is, the ability to reflect upon ones' own and others behavior in terms of underlying mental states, plays an important role in parenting behavior and children's socioemotional development. RF has been suggested to be impaired in psychopathology, and thus maternal psychopathology after birth, such as postpartum depression (PPD) and Personality Disorder (PD), may not only affect the mother's socioe…
Adolescents Conceived through Donor Insemination in Mother‐Headed Families
This study interviewed adolescents conceived using sperm donation to examine their experiences of contacting and meeting ‘same‐donor offspring’ (i.e. donor‐conceived offspring raised in different families who share the same donor), their motivations for this contact, and how they make meaning of these relationships. This in‐depth qualitative study involved semi‐structured interviews with 23 young people aged 12–19 years (mean = 14 years). Intervi…
Effectiveness of school-based mental health playgroups for diagnosable and at-risk preschool children
Risk factors during preschool years, such as poverty and unattended social/emotional problems, are known to have a strong negative influence on children's later functioning. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of an on-site integrated school-based mental health services and consultation program for preschool children and their families. The sample consisted of 47 children and parents in 3 childcare centers who came from low-socioeco…
Psychology (31 works) · Developmental psychology (21 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (15 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (14 works) · Medicine (13 works) · Psychiatry (13 works) · Attachment theory (12 works) · Clinical Psychology (10 works) · Child Welfare and Adoption (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works)