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Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22

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Journal of Environmental Psychology

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ jep

Towards a developmental theory of place attachment

Paul Morgan*

Child Protection Unit, Sydney Children’s Hospital, High Street, Randwick NSW 2031, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online 13 August 2009

Keywords:Place attachmentAttachment theoryChild development

* Tel.: þ61 2 9382 1412.E-mail address: paul.morgan@sesiahs.health.nsw.g

0272-4944/$ – see front matter � 2009 Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.07.001

a b s t r a c t

Place theory offers no explanation of the developmental processes by which place attachment arises.Drawing on recent findings in human attachment theory, this study offers a developmental model of theprocess by which place attachment emerges from a childhood place experience. A pattern of positivelyaffected experiences of place in childhood are generalised into an unconscious internal working model ofplace which manifests subjectively as a long-term positively affected bond to place known as placeattachment. Qualitative analysis of adult remembrance of childhood place experience provides supportfor this model and finds important parallels in the developmental processes underpinning placeattachment and human attachment as well as some differences.

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1. Introduction

The concept of place refers to the subjective experience ofembodied human existence in the material world. It is a paradoxicalconcept with a meaning that is readily grasped, but difficult todefine. In their review of place attachment literature, Low andAltman (1992) state that while place is an integrating concept,there is no systematic theory of place, and numerous commenta-tors since have echoed their concerns about the lack of conceptualcoherence in place research. Patterson and Williams (2005) suggestthat no systematic theory of place has emerged because the domainof place research is composed of multiple research traditions basedon very different, often incompatible epistemological foundationsand philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality. Someaspects of place research are best dealt with quantitatively, whilefor other aspects a qualitative approach is more appropriate. Theyargue that if researchers grounded in any one research paradigmrecognise the limits to that paradigm and adopt an attitude ofopenness to alternative paradigms, their ‘critical pluralist’ frame-work provides an overarching coherence to the field.

This study recognises three broad approaches to place theory,which often appear to be incompatible. Phenomenological andhumanistic approaches explore the deeper significance of place tohuman existence and the subjective, emotional quality of people’srelationship to places. This tradition has been criticised by posi-tivistic place researchers for the lack of an empirical basis, and by

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social place theorists as politically regressive in ignoring the socialforces by which the meaning of place is contested (Creswell, 2004).

A second tradition, which Patterson and Williams (2005) namepsychometrics, explores the relationship between the physical envi-ronment and the human psyche by attributing numeric measures topsychosocial phenomena such as place attachment and then ana-lysing this data using quantitative techniques. Grounded in the epis-temology of scientific empiricism, this tradition has been criticised forreducing holistic phenomena to a mechanistic set of interactingobjective elements, and failing to provide any account of the subjec-tive aspects of the human experience of place (Malpas, 1999). Thethird tradition, social constructivism, while happy to embracesubjectivity, sees it as a socially constructed phenomenon (Massey,1994). Constructivist place theorists have been criticised for seekingto explain place solely in terms of the social processes and failing toaccount for the embodied, individuated nature of subjective experi-ence and the link that the body creates between subjectivity and theobjective material world (Malpas, 1999). Following Patterson andWilliams (2005), this study recognises that a broad discussion of thephenomenon of place attachment will draw on contributions to placeliterature from each of these research approaches.

2. Place attachment

Most authors recognise an emotional or affective component inthe concept of place attachment. But the word emotion, like place,has an easy-to-understand, hard-to-define quality making placeattachment if anything, more conceptually elusive than place itself.Giuliani and Feldman (1993) identify 11 different definitions ofplace attachment in a single review collection of articles. In thisstudy place attachment refers to the experience of a long-term

1 Strictly speaking, the use of the term attachment theory is a misnomer, as itrepresents only part of this new convergence. This field of research and theory,currently in the throws of a Kuhnian revolution, is so wide ranging and rapidlyexpanding, that it is yet to attract a broadly accepted identifying name. Someresearchers have named it ‘infant brain research’. However, this name overlooks thevery significant social aspects of the field and restricts the age range of research. Forits part ‘attachment theory’ does not explicitly include the considerable neuro--scientific elements of the field. The term attachment theory is used here because ithas wide recognition, because it includes those aspects of the field most pertinentto this study, and because it has a complimentarity vis-a-vis the term placeattachment.

P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–2212

affective bond to a particular geographic area and the meaningattributed to that bond. Where a person lives in a particular localeover an extended period, that person will often develop feelings ofaffection for, and a sense of belonging, or being of that place, so thatplace becomes ‘one anchor of his or her identity’ (Hay, 1998).Indeed Proshansky, Fabian, and Kaminoff (1983) coined the termplace identity to signify the importance of the physical environ-ment in shaping the human sense of self. Early studies tended toconceive of place attachment as static. More recently a dynamicview has emerged, so that while place attachment is understood asenduring, it is also seen as changing over time (Hay,1998).

For many individuals, childhood place experience plays animportant role in adult identity (Cobb, 1977; Cooper, 1992; Hester &O’Donnell, 1987; Pearce, 1977). Film and literature offer numerousexamples of adult identity being profoundly shaped by childhoodplace experience. Hay (1998), investigating place attachment overthe entire human life span found that feelings of connection orbelonging to place increased as people aged, and that placeattachments formed in childhood were stronger than those formedlater in life. Strong bonds to place are only possible when individ-uals remained in their place of origin for the duration of childhood.This finding reflects a widespread agreement in the literature thatthe foundations of place attachment are laid down in middlechildhood (Sobel, 1990).

Descriptive studies also indicate a qualitative difference betweenadult and childhood experience of place. Adult accounts of placeattachment tend to highlight their feelings for place, the meaningsattributed to those feelings, and an awareness of the socioculturalinfluence on place attachment (Massey, 1994; Twigger-Ross &Uzzell, 1996). On the other hand, enquiries into children’s attitudetowards place describe an unselfconscious, taken-for-grantedapproach to place, where the physical environment is valued forwhat you can do in it, rather than in and of itself or for socialmeanings (Hart, 1979; Hay, 1998; Moore, 1986). Descriptive studieshave identified common themes of children’s engagement withplace. These include: children’s preference for natural over man-made environments (Jones & Cunningham, 1999); children’ssensuous engagement with place (Cobb, 1977; Sebba, 1991);exploration and place-play as inherently pleasurable, self-directedlearning activities (Sebba, 1991); and children’s use of place foremotional regulation (Dovey, 1990; Kirkby, 1989; Korpela, 1989).

Qualitative studies of adults’ retrospective accounts of child-hood places note the important meaning that memories of child-hood places take on later in life. The memories of those places canevoke powerful feelings and exert great influence over adultidentity (Cooper, 1992; Porteous, 1990; Rubenstein & Parmelee,1992). Where adults have migrated away from their place of origin,they can be prone to spending significant amounts of timereflecting on memories of childhood place rather than engagingwith their immediate surrounds. ‘Our places of origin shape uswhether we like it or not’ (Chawla, 1992). This importance attrib-uted to the autobiographical memory of place should not beconfused with veracity. Sebba found a marked disjunction betweenadult reports of a remembered childhood preference for outdoorsettings (96.5%) and children’s reported preferences for outdoorsettings (46%), indicating that adult remembrance of childhoodexperience is subject to a degree of reconstruction and reinter-pretation. Nonetheless, the strong affects commonly experiencedduring adult remembrance of childhood place experience ledChawla to argue that ‘this backward glance is an in importantdimension of [place] attachment (Chawla, 1992).

However, the processes that link adult identity with childhoodplace experiences are unclear. A number of qualitative studies ofchildren’s use of place attribute place attachment to the supportand stimulation of human developmental processes that place

offers children. Hart (1979) and Olwig (1989) link place attachmentto opportunities the physical environment offers children for therealisation of the developmental drive for mastery. Some authorsattribute developmental significance to the self-directed andpleasurable nature of children’s place-based play and exploration(Cobb, 1977; Hart, 1979; Porteous, 1990; Schachtel, 1959).

Sebba (1991) argues that the developmental drive towardssensory integration and the drive to obtain information about theenvironment underpin a heightened attentiveness to place inchildhood. Also, a developmental shift in early adolescence fromthe primacy of sensory to cognitive engagement with the world isaccompanied by a dimming of sensory perception. Prior to theemergence of abstract thinking in adolescence, sensory perceptionis more vivid and pleasurable. Consequently, memory of childhoodplace is fixed in the context of an intense and ecstatic sensoryawareness (Cobb, 1977; Sebba, 1991). For these researchers, placeattachment to a greater or lesser extent is established through thedevelopmental processes of childhood. Some argue that children’sobserved preference for natural settings over manmade environ-ments represents a universal developmental need (Cobb, 1977;Hart, 1979; Pearce, 1977).

However, it is difficult to reconcile this position with Chawla’s(1986) finding that the experience of a positively affected placeattachment is not universal. Place attachment quality and strengthvaries widely with some adults experiencing either no or negativefeelings about their place of origin. The memory of childhood place iscentral to adult identity for some, but for others, place has littlebearing on their sense of self. Chawla identified seven differentqualitative categories of place attachment, but explanation ofdifferences in the formative process responsible for the differentstrengths and categories of place attachment are vague.

3. Attachment theory1

Two decades before Patterson and Williams (2005) offered their‘critical pluralist’ resolution of the problem of conflicting traditionsof place research, Daniel Stern (1985) identified a similar episte-mological impasse confronting developmental psychology. In orderto progress, developmental psychology required an accurateworking hypothesis of infantile subjective experience. Stern arguedthat such a hypothesis of infantile subjective reality needed toinclude both developmental psychology’s observed infant and thesubjectively reconstructed infantile experience of psychoanalysis,but that neither approach alone provided an adequate account ofhuman psychological development. He pointed out that some of thetenets of psychoanalysis had been disproved by empirical observa-tions while developmental psychology, restricted to observation,revealed little of the ‘felt quality of lived social experience’.

To relate observed behaviour to subjective experience, one mustmake inferential leaps. As soon as we try to make inferencesabout. the actual experience of the real infant – that is, to buildin qualities of subjective experience such as a sense of self – weare thrown back to our own subjective experience as the main

P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22 13

source of inspiration. Here, then, is the problem: the subjectivelife of the adult is the main source of inference about the infant’sfelt quality of social experience. A degree of circularity isunavoidable. Each view of the infant [adult clinical reconstruc-tion and observational] has features the other lacks.(Stern, 1985, pp. 13–17)

Like Patterson and Williams, Stern noted that epistemologicallyconflicted approaches show a high degree of complementarity, andthe integration of objectivist, scientific approaches with subjectiveclinical methods resulted in a new holistic conception of how thehuman mind/brain develops.

This overarching coherence is widely understood to have origi-nated in the work of John Bowlby (1969,1974,1980). His attachmenttheory, developed from naturalistic observations of infants andmothers, described attachment as infant behaviours that elicit adultproximity and care-giving responses. These instinctive behaviourshave their roots in neurophysiological structures of the body. Ina break with behaviourist orthodoxy of the period, Bowlby alsoexplained attachment behaviours as being motivated by subjectiveemotional states. He argued that long-term emotional bonds toparticular individuals are a basic part of human nature. An attach-ment bond to someone endows feelings of security and wellbeing inthe presence of that person. Attachment behaviours are triggered byfeelings of anxiety and distress experienced by young children onseparation from parental caregivers (Bowlby, 1974).

By using subjective understanding of emotional states to explainobserved infant behaviours, Bowlby integrated supposedly incom-patible epistemologies to provide a holistic scientific theory of greatscope and explanatory power. Previously under the dominance ofbehaviourism, emotions had been dismissed as subjectivephenomena, unmeasurable, and irrelevant to the objective scientificstudy of the human psychology. However, with the development ofa procedure known as the ‘Strange Situation’, attachment theory’srecognition of emotional states was validated using a predictiveempirical methodology (Colin, 1996). Attachment theory legiti-mised the scientific study of internal states and repositionedemotions as central to understanding the human mind.

In this transactional model of human development, thesimplistic nature versus nurture debate has been replaced bya model, where human development is shaped by a complexinterplay of environmental and genetic factors occurring in thecontext of the attachment relationship (Rutter, 2002; Sameroff &Fiese, 2000; Siegel, 2001). From birth, infant and caregiver areengaged in a reciprocal system of sensory stimulation and non-verbal communication of emotional states, and these sequences ofinteraction usually culminate in the shared experience of mutualdelight (Schore, 1994). Frequent daily experiences of care-givingand emotional attunement with the attachment figure are gener-alised in the infant’s mind into mental representations of self andcaregiver that become unconscious psychological structures knownas internal working models (Bowlby, 1980). These internal modelsare enduring psychological structures and form the template for allsubsequent social relationships. Internal working models manifestsubjectively as the long-lasting emotional bond known as love(Sroufe, 1990).

Attachment interactions also shape the phenotypic expression ofbrain structure. The vast majority of connections between humanbrain cells are established postnatally. Advanced brain imagingtechniques show the normal development of brain microstructurein infancy is highly dependant on the quality of the attachmentrelationship (de Haan, Belsky, Reid, Volein, & Johnson, 2004; Schore,1997). The caregiver’s capacity to attune to the infant’s emotionalstate, and to engage in complex sequences of reciprocal behaviouralinteractions are fundamental to these developments. Where these

abilities are present, attachment is secure, and large numbers ofsynaptic connections develop. However, where the attachmentrelationship is significantly disrupted, synaptic connectivity andpsychological functioning are markedly impaired (Greenspan,1999;Rutter et al., 1997; Siegel, 1999; Zeanah, Boris, & Larrieu, 1997).

Attachment relationships also influence the way memory isstructured (Siegel, 1999, pp. 29–33). Implicit memory is composedof internal working models, the generalised representations ofattachment interactions. Implicit memories do not requireconscious attention for their formation, and normally lie outside ofconscious awareness. They are fixed in childhood, and are charac-terised by the absence of subjective sense of remembrance. Explicitautobiographical memory, the memory of self across time, ischaracterised by a subjective sense of recollection and narrativestructuring. The storage of explicit memory involves a processknown as ‘cortical consolidation’. Each act of explicit rememberinginvolves the reorganisation of existing memory traces into new,unpredictable associative linkages. Internal working models havean important influence over cortical consolidation, shaping boththe content and narrative structuring of autobiographical memory.Themes reflecting internal working models bring coherence andcontinuity to explicit memory (Siegel, 1999).

4. Emotion and the self: emergent phenomena

More recently attachment theory has expanded to include anidentity theory, self psychology (Cicchetti & Beeghly, 1994). Itdescribes how the psychological structure of the self emerges fromthe intersubjective context of the attachment relationship,providing a biological developmental basis to social identity theo-ries. Infants communicate their biological needs by becoming dis-tressed. By attending to infantile biological needs and providingsoothing, attachment figures regulate emotional distress. Withtime and frequent repetition, infants establish an internal workingmodel of this care-giving role and through this process, learn toregulate emotional arousal for themselves. The process ofemotional regulation that emerges in the attachment relationshipplays a major role in establishing internal coherence in the infant(Schore, 1994).

Brain imaging studies show that the processes of emotionalregulation and integration of mental functions both utilise thesame neural structures within the limbic system (Siegel, 1998).Emotions are now understood as emergent phenomena arisingfrom the integration of all domains of physical and mental activitywithin the body (Damasio, 1998; Sroufe,1996). The subjective senseof self (identity) arises from the experience of integration, theholistic, internal organisation that emerges from the generalisationof repeated experiences of affect regulation within the attachmentrelationship (Ciompi, 1991; Schore, 1994; Siegel, 1999; Sroufe,1996). Three aspects of attachment interactions are essential for theemergence of a healthy sense of self: shared pleasure, soothing ofdistress and repetition (Schore, 1994).

5. Lack of a developmental theory of place attachment

The last thirty years have witnessed enormous advances in thefield of developmental psychology and neurobiology. Attachmenttheory now provides a detailed, systematic account of the biolog-ical, psychological and social processes that shape human devel-opment and has achieved the status of scientific orthodoxy. Bycontrast, place theorists offer no systematic explanation of how thecomplex relationship between place, identity, affect and cognitiondevelops throughout childhood. Place theory has failed to capitaliseon progress in developmental science. Lack of dialogue betweendevelopmental psychology and environmental psychology’s place

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theory is apparent from the very limited referencing across thesefields in scientific journals. The few attempts to build a coherentdevelopmental theory of place attachment (Chawla, 1992; Hart,1979; Moore, 1986) draw on theories that predate the recentadvances in developmental science.

Low and Altman (1992) noted a growing interest in exploringthe ‘social relations that a place signifies’, and since the late 1980sthe majority of studies have tended to focus on the socialconstruction of place attachment. In that time most investigationsof the relationship between place and identity have relied heavilyon adult focused, cognitive and social frameworks, largely ignoringpsychobiological developmental processes, as though placeattachment arrives fully formed in adulthood (Jorgensen & Sted-man, 2001; Massey, 1994; Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996). Placeattachment theory offers no systematic explanation of the forma-tive processes by which place attachment in all its observed vari-ations emerges (Chawla, 1992). In spite of Chawla’s identification ofthe need for research in this area, the absence of a systematicexplanation of the process by which place attachment emergesremains a significant gap in the literature of place.

6. Integrating attachment and place attachment theory

The environmental and developmental branches of psychologyboth stand to benefit from a greater dialogue between attachmenttheory and place theory. This study brings together recent devel-opments in these two fields. Attachment theory offers a theory thatprovides useful insights for the elaboration of the developmentalperspective that place theory currently lacks. However attachmenttheory attributes no developmental significance to the child’srelationship with the physical environment – place. Sameroff’s(1975) transactional theory describes human development asemerging from a relationship of mutual interaction between childand environment. The reciprocity and mutual influence betweencaregiver and child central to attachment theory exemplify trans-actional processes.

In spite of place theorists identifying the important role thatphysical environment plays an in human development (Chawla,1992; Hart, 1979; Moore, 1989; Proshansky et al., 1983), forattachment theorists, transactional theory applies only to the socialenvironment, not the physical environment. The role of place indevelopmental processes remains largely overlooked by attach-ment theorists. Where the literature of children’s place describesa rich interactive relationship in which place nurtures and stimu-lates children’s development through interactions of play, explo-ration, sensory stimulation and emotional regulation, attachmenttheory sees place only as a passive backdrop for the attachmentrelationship. In comparison with the detailed analysis attachmenttheory affords the human attachment relationship, the role of placeas a vital, interactive presence stimulating and supporting thechild’s development remains uninvestigated.

Emotion is a crucial part of the relationship between person andenvironment (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1984; Russell & Snodgrass, 1987;Tuan, 1974; Wohlwill & Heft, 1987), and is central to the concept ofplace attachment. However, emotion has proved ‘the mostproblem-fraught sector in contemporary psychology’ (Giuliani,2003), prompting Russell and Snodgrass (1987) to observe withrespect to environmental psychology, that ‘the relationshipbetween emotion and environment thus remains largelyuncharted’. Because emotions do not easily lend themselves to theempirical strategy of measurement, psychometrics has largelyignored them, favouring the investigation of behaviour and cogni-tion in order to progress psychological theory. Mehrabian andRussell (1974) developed a three dimensional model for measuringthe emotional qualities of environments, but to date, use of this

psychometric tool has not been widely repeated in environmentalpsychology. However, the role of emotion is seen as central toattachment theory. Place attachment theory could profitably makeuse of both the detail and the epistemological approach of attach-ment theory.

Attachment theory recognises that subjective affective statesdrive observed human behaviour. ‘There is no action and nothought that is not affectively motivated. Motivation underpinsagency and motivation is always emotional’ (Basch, 1988, pp. 68–69). The attachment theorist Lichtenberg (1989) has proposed thathuman behaviour is driven by a set of five ‘motivational systems’,‘designed to promote the fulfilment and regulation of basic needs.’Two of these systems, the attachment-affiliation system and theexploration-assertion system are of interest here. The attachmentsystem motivates proximity and care seeking behaviours. Theexploration system motivates engagement with the environment.According to Lichtenberg, the experience of exploration and agencyin the world produces positively affected sense of efficacy andcompetence. Lichtenberg (1989) suggests that behaviours promp-ted by his exploration-assertion motivational system (play andexploration) result in positive affect, motivating engagement withthe world other than the attachment figure.

The attachment system activates a positively affected care-giving interaction between attachment figure and infant. Frequentrepetition of this interaction results in patterning of the behaviourand associated emotional states, and the emergence of an uncon-scious psychological structure (internal working model of therelationship) which manifests in conscious awareness as a long-term, specific affective bond towards the attachment figure. Thecharacter of the internal working model (as template for allsubsequent social relationships) is shaped by the generalisedquality of these attachment interactions. Where the positive qualityof the interactions is significantly compromised by negativeemotional states of the attachment figure, the attachment isdescribed as insecure (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978).

Marvin, Cooper, Hoffman, and Powell (2002) have developeda model of child behaviour in relation to the attachment figureresulting from the interplay of the attachment and explorationmotivational system. Their Circle of Security (COS) model describesthe child’s circular pattern of movement through the physicalenvironment (called ‘the world’ in attachment theory), that beginsand ends with the attachment figure. When the exploration systemis activated, the child moves away from the attachment figure toexplore and play. When the child becomes distressed, anxious ortired, the attachment system is activated and he seeks proximity to,and emotional regulation from, the attachment figure. The modelemphasises the emotional states and developmental needsunderpinning this circular pattern, and explains how a child’sdevelopmental trajectory is shaped by their patterned experienceof interaction with the attachment figure (Marvin et al., 2002).

The physical environment has no role in this model. Motivationto explore and play is located wholly in the child, rather than ina relationship between child and environment. Striniste and Moore(1989) contest such a non-transactional construction of the child’srelationship with the physical environment. ‘Motivation [is] botha quality inherent to the child, which determines how the child willuse the environment, and a quality of the environment, which hasthe potential to draw the child’s involvement’ (p. 25). Place is a vital,fascinating presence that draws in the child. Fascination is thehuman response to environments or ‘circumstances that call on theeffortless attention [and] are intrinsically compelling’ (Kaplan,1995, p. 172). The integration of this understanding of the physicalenvironment as an interactive presence influencing child behaviourand attachment theory’s detailed interactional model of humandevelopment points the way towards a developmental theory of

P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22 15

place attachment. This study proposes a variation to the Circle ofSecurity model to one in which the child’s pattern of behaviour isdepicted as to and fro’ between two antithetical poles – physicalenvironment and attachment figure.

Fig. 1 depicts this integrated developmental model of humanattachment and place attachment. The diagram outlines the inter-actional pattern emerging from integration of the attachmentsystem and the exploration-assertion motivational system. Theupper arc of the diagram represents activation of the exploration-assertion motivational system. The child’s exposure to the physicalenvironment elicits arousal of this motivational system, resulting ininternal states such as fascination or excitement, and a consequentmovement away from the attachment figure to exploration andplay interactions with the environment. These place interactionsgenerate positively affected senses of mastery, adventure, freedomas well as sensory pleasure. The lower part of the diagram repre-sents the attachment motivational system. When interaction withthe outdoor environment elicits pain (through injury), or anxiety(through perceived threat or overlong absence from the attachmentfigure), the attachment motivational system is engaged overridingthe exploration system. The child seeks proximity to and comfortfrom the attachment figure. Interaction with the attachment figureresults in regulation of emotional arousal and a positively affectedsense of connection. When the child’s need for connection andregulation is satisfied, environmental cues stimulate the explora-tion motivational system causing it to override the attachmentsystem, reinitiating the cycle. This sequence results in a to and fro’movement between attachment figure and environment, anda cyclical pattern of emotional arousal, interaction and positiveaffect.

Using a pluralistic combination of attachment theory’s holisticmodel of human development and place theory’s recognition ofa transactional role for the physical environment in human devel-opment, this study proposes a developmental model in which placeattachment emerges from a child-environment interactionalsequence of arousal, exploration/play and pleasure. An internalworking model of the attachment relationship develops from thepatterning of repeated positively affected interactions with theattachment figure. In a similar process, the day-to-day pattern of

Fig. 1. Integrated model of human at

a child’s positively affected exploration/play/mastery and sensoryinteractions with her environment is internalised into an uncon-scious internal working model of that relationship. The long-termaffective bond known as place attachment is the conscioussubjective manifestation of that internal working model. This is theprocess by which place attachment develops.

7. Research method

This study explores if there is preliminary support for thedevelopmental model of place attachment presented here, byinvestigating if qualitative accounts provide grounds for the prop-osition that a long-term affective bond to place develops froma childhood pattern of positively affected interactions with place.The study uses qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews ofadults to look for indications of a process of internalisation andgeneralisation of positively affected childhood place experiencesinto internal working models of childhood place relationshipswhich manifest consciously as place attachment. It is argued thatqualitative accounts of subjective adult remembrance of childhoodplace experiences will contain common themes reflecting theinfluence of internal working models of childhood place experienceon explicit memory. Attachment theory also theorises that theattachment relationship is central to the development of the self,and the study also investigates whether there is further support forthe model presented here (Fig. 1) in the form of participants’identification of a role for childhood place experience in thedevelopment of adult sense of identity that parallels the identity-shaping role of the attachment relationship.

In the study seven adults, five male and two females undertooka semi-structured interview. Participants in the study were selectedon the basis of having previously expressed adult place attachmentsentiments likely to indicate the presence of long-term affectivebonds. This approach reflects the phenomenological method ofchoosing ‘the best group of subjects available in our culture’ (VanKaam cit Crotty, 1996) to articulate the phenomenon beingresearched. Participants were all middle aged (early forties to midsixties). In recognition of Riley’s (1992) emphasis on the concept ofreadily accessible ‘ordinary’ places, and of the importance of

tachment and place attachment

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natural environments to children’s development (Striniste &Moore, 1989), and which abound in objects and processes whichelicit human fascination (Kaplan, 1995), participants were alsoselected on the basis of having grown up in locales where they hadeveryday access to natural environments either on suburbanfringes (4), or rural areas (3).

The interviews were divided into three sections. In the firstsection, participants were asked open questions about their placesand families of origin in order to position participants biographi-cally and geographically. These questions drew on exclusively onexplicit memory.

Can you tell me something about the place where you grew up?Can you tell me about your childhood family?Were there any particular special places that you remember?

The second part of the interview process had some similaritywith the psychoanalytic approach of ‘bringing unconscious materialto consciousness’ (Frosh, 2002, p. 16), in order to arrive at thesubjectively reconstructed childhood experience of adult psycho-analysis, which Stern (1985) identified as the ‘main source of infer-ence about the infant’s felt quality of social experience’. The aim herediffered somewhat from psychoanalysis in that the interviews wereintended to reveal unconscious internal working models of placerelationships rather than social relationships. To this end, questionsfocused on place memories and participants were encouraged todescribe any involuntary place memories (Game, 2001) and asso-ciations that came to mind, as these are likely to reflect unconsciousprocesses (Freud, 1976; Frosh, 2002). At the start of this part of theinterviews participants were administered a passive relaxationexercise (Everly & Rosenfeld, 1981; Madders, 1981; Payne, 2005),a procedure intended to induce a mental state of unfocused reverie,which facilitates the emergence of unconscious material associatedwith childhood environments (Bachelard, 1969). Participants werealso encouraged to enter into the ‘felt quality’ of memories, in orderto highlight the subjective emotional and sensory qualities ofchildhood place memories and minimise analytic cognitiveprocesses. Questions from this section included.

Can you describe that place [you are remembering], how itlooked, the sounds and smells?Can you tell me how you felt as a child in this place?

In the third section of the interview, respondents were invited toreflect on the meaning of their memories from an adult perspective,particularly as to how they understood the relationship betweentheir childhood experiences of place and adult identity.

How do you think the experience of growing up in that place hasshaped who you are now?Can you tell me what is it like for you as an adult to rememberyour childhood experience of where you grew up?

These questions were intended to explore cognitive meaningsthat participants attributed to their childhood place memories.Data interpretation drew on phenomenologist, Giorgi’s method ofdata analysis (Giorgi cit Von Eckartsberg, 1998) in which interviewswere broken up into numerous ‘meaning units’, short sequences ofuniform meaning. Using the process of phenomenological reduc-tion, broad themes emerging from the interviews were identified,and meaning units are coded according to those themes. Majorthemes, those with the highest aggregates of meaning units, wereinterpreted as reflecting unconscious working models (Siegel,1999), and detailed in the results. Finally, in a separate analysis,longer interview sequences reflecting the arousal-interaction-pleasure dynamics of the proposed developmental model of placeattachment (Fig. 1) were identified.

8. Results

The seven interviews yielded seven highly particular accounts ofchildhood place experience. In each interview, childhood place isinextricably interwoven into broader biographical narrative. Indi-vidual family members, family structure and culture, as well as thewider culture, and place itself, all interact to create a unique set ofconditions within which a child experiences place. Adult placeattachment cannot be understood without reference this broaderbiographical frame, and a brief biography of each participant asrevealed in the interviews is included to contextualise exerts cited.

Phillip grew up in suburban Sydney with access to extensiveopen spaces of farm, bush, park and industrial land along the upperreaches of Sydney Harbour. In his early twenties he spent someyears in Europe until he felt compelled to return home afterencountering the unique smell of the Sydney flora at Kew BotanicGardens. He still lives in his childhood home. Bluey grew up ona small family farm of pasture and woodlands outside of Mel-bourne. This property became a refuge from a school life where hewas unhappy and struggled academically. He lived on the propertyuntil it was sold in his early twenties. He now lives in a suburb25 km from the farm, which still has an important place in hisdream-life.

Annie grew up on a large sheep grazing property in New SouthWales. At age 12 much of the property was excised from her fam-ily’s ownership and she was sent to boarding school. After schoolshe went to college, and lived in Europe for several years beforereturning to care for her father. She now lives on another property20 km from her childhood farm. Mick grew up on the outskirts ofChristchurch, New Zealand where he had access to the Port Hills,a large grassy volcano remnant. When he was 11 his youngerbrother died in an accident as they played, and Mick became verysocially withdrawn through his adolescence. As a young man he leftNew Zealand and now lives in Melbourne.

Jim grew up on an orchard outside Adelaide. He left the familyfarm to attend boarding school in adolescence. He went on touniversity and a successful academic career in USA, but abandonedthis and returned to Australia to work as a farmer and environ-mental consultant. He now lives in coastal bushland 1200 km fromhis childhood farm. Neal grew up in a suburb of Sydney with accessto large tracts of forested parkland. His account of childhood localneighbourhood was extremely limited, and focused instead on ofholiday places away from home, and his bedroom. He now lives inthe very urban environment of inner Sydney. Jane grew up inCanberra when it was a very small city with extensive open spaces.At age 8 her family spent a year in England, and she experiencedclinical depression, missing her older brother, her dog and the clearblue skies and trees of Canberra. When she returned her brotherhad left home, her dog had died, a much-loved tree was cut down,and Canberra was never the same for her. Jane now lives in innerMelbourne.

8.1. Adult emotional connection to place

Participants estimated that most place memories described inthe interview date from between the ages of eight and thirteen,with none dating from earlier than five. They expressed twobroadly different degrees of emotional connection within theinterviews. Annie, Jane, Bluey, Phillip and Mick reported momentsduring the interview of intensely reliving childhood memories, tothe point where the present-day context was experienced as lessvivid, less real than the remembered experience. Such memorieswere often involuntary. Jane: [That memory] came into my mindunbidden. I was intending to talk about other places, but this imagewas just there, too strong to ignore. These memories appeared in the

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form of a static image rather than a narrative structure, although inmost cases participants soon added a narrative context. Present daysurroundings faded to background when feeling states associatedwith these images were experienced as being intensely relived inthe present rather than being recalled. Recounted in the presenttense, these memories lacked a subjective sense of remembrance.Although these experiences during the interview were relativelybrief they were very intense and participants attributed greatsignificance to them. Jane: I’ve always had those memories, but notwith so much feeling. It’s like they’re in full colour rather than blackand white.

This subjective emotional intensity was also conveyed in non-verbal expressions such as gesture, facial expression, and vocaltone. These moments of deep immersion in childhood memorywere characterised by enormous intersubjective power. Sensoryimpressions were described with great clarity and detail givingthese memories a vitality that was absent from other parts of theinterview when a more mundane adult cognitive sensibilitypredominated, and memories were described as distant picturesviewed from the outside rather than being relived from within.Participants who experienced these moments of deep immersionin childhood emotional states also reported strong adult placeattachments. Jane, Bluey, Phillip and Mick reported that as adultsthey still experienced a strong sense of attachment to theirchildhood places. Annie said that she recalled having a strongemotional bond to her family farm as a child, but she no longerfelt this way. She did however report a very strong adultattachment to her current home, a similar landscape to that ofher childhood.

Although they were known to have previously expressedsentiments of adult place attachment, both Neal and Jim reportedlittle sense of emotional connection with their childhood placeexperience. Their generally flat non-verbal expression, anda marked lack of sensory detail in their descriptions of childhoodplace added weight to these self reports. Neal said that he hadnever felt a strong place attachment his childhood neighbour-hood places, and in his interview he spoke only of special distantplaces where holidays were spent. Neal: I wish I could recall moreof the detail of it.I don’t feel great attachment to [childhood pla-ces]. Jim did report a sense of place attachment. However, whenquestioned further he could articulate little sensory or emotionaldetail to give substance to his attachment to either childhood oradult place.

8.2. Common themes of childhood place remembrance

These reported differences in the intensity of emotionalengagement with memories of childhood place offered onedimension in which narratives could be differentiated. Through theprocess of thematic analysis the following themes emerged fromthe adult remembrances of childhood place experience. Excerptsfrom the interviews cited typify the thematic expressions ofa number of participants.

8.2.1. LoveAnnie: I was intensely engaged in the love I had for that farm. [It

was] really intense as a child. All respondents except Neal reporteda love of childhood place. Five participants who still felt this lovestrongly, also described a reciprocal sense of having felt loved andnurtured or nourished by their childhood place, and of havingderived a sense of psychological wellbeing from this experience.Phillip: I feel like I belong here. It’s like I just know this is my home,and um. I’m always going to be, I suppose nourished by it. Jane:There’s a kind of nurturing, nourishing space around you.

8.2.2. GriefThe most intense expressions of emotion connected with

memories of childhood place were those of grief. Annie: [Losing thefamily farm] was like losing a limb. You know, I mean something vitalhad gone. With the exception of Annie, this grief was still keenly feltin adulthood. Mick and Jane experienced loss of childhood placethrough migration, while Phillip expressed a deep sense of griefover changes he has witnessed to his childhood place where he stilllives. For Mick, Annie and Jane this place-related grief was inter-woven with childhood losses associated with family. Bluey andMick also reported experiencing feelings of intense emotionaldistress being soothed by time spent in childhood place. Neal andJim denied any sense of grief associated with absence from theirchildhood places.

8.2.3. PleasureThe emotion most frequently expressed throughout all the

interviews was that of pleasure/delight. Non-verbal expressionsindicated that as they remembered during the interview, respon-dents frequently re-experienced feelings of pleasure associatedwith various childhood place experiences. Participants describedseveral different types of pleasure. PLAY: All participants enjoyedrecounting memories of play-in-place. Jim: We made a racetrack inthere no one knew about. And it was curves, and rises and jumps andstuff. And we would go and race bikes in there. I haven’t thoughtabout that for a long time. That was a lot of fun. SENSORY PLEASURE:Jane: And this lovely sort of mellow kind of lambent quality to the light,as it is filtered by those beautiful green leaves of the willow. I justabsolutely love it. It just fills me with the most buoyant sense of joy, likeI could just leap into the air. Participants expressed delight inremembered childhood sensory experience of place, and statedthey were re-experiencing the original feelings as they spoke.These memories were often multisensory. Mick: The smells would bea mixture of sheep shit, pine, um a certain um crispness, crispness inthe smells, and the sound is the wind in the tussocks. MASTERY: Allrespondents reported childhood feelings of pleasure associatedwith a growing sense of agency, skill and achievement in thematerial world. Mick: The physical world is where I had most of mysuccess and achievement as a kid, because I certainly had noneacademically and certainly very limited socially. ADVENTURE: Mostrespondents reported a delightful sense of adventure associatedwith exploration, imaginative play, risk and manageable feelings ofanxiety. Phillip: You could be anywhere in the world, you couldimagine yourself a pirate or you could play war games or anyadventurous sense of a story could be easily conjured up from theseplaces and they always involved the outdoors. FREEDOM: An enjoy-able sense of freedom was frequently expressed, usually in associ-ation with the perceived absence of adult control. Annie: The senseof movement through space, you know the emptiness, the wind, andthe freedom of being on a horse that was cantering along. You knowthat’s the overwhelming memory of place that came back to me. justa great feeling. In the absence of major trauma, childhood experi-ence of place appears to be inherently pleasurable. The process ofremembering childhood place was also described as enjoyable bymost participants, even where feelings of loss and grief wereexperienced.

8.2.4. SecurityMick: Being on the vine and snuggled into it, and feeling very

contained and secure and comfy in it. Most respondents expresseda positively affected sense of security associated with childhoodplace. This recalled sense of security-in-place appears to haveemerged from a strong sense of childhood familiarity with placedescribed by six of the seven respondents. Mick: This tussock’sfamiliar, the sounds are familiar, the bird-life’s familiar, the tracks are

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familiar, all the different brows, the contours and textures are familiar.Implied here is a repeated, goal-less criss-crossing of childhoodplace, which Bluey named wandering, and which gave rise to thissense of familiarity. In marked contrast to other respondents, Neal’saccounts of childhood places were frequently coloured by feelingsof anxiety and lack of security. His account also differed in that itcontained no sense of familiarity with childhood place or anyrecollections of exploration and play-in-place independent of adultsupervision. The potential for the sense of place-security to beillusory was powerfully brought home to Mick when his brotherwas killed as a result of play-in-place. Along with the sense ofpersonal security emerging from familiarity, the rapid pace of thechild’s developmental change, vis-a-vis the usually slow pace ofchange to place, gave rise to a sense that childhood place itself issecure, permanent; a trust that place was always just out thebackdoor (Phillip). The sense that place itself is secure could also beillusory as Annie found out when much of the family farm was lost.You know, . something vital had gone.

8.2.5. IdentityAnnie, Jane, Bluey, Phillip and Mick all attributed great impor-

tance to the developmental influence of childhood place, statingthat it helped form and still contributes to their adult identity.Mick: Somehow those hills are connected to my soul.you know justas I began to think about it a lot more, um [I realise] how bloodyimportant it was. This is home. This is what shaped me. It wasshaping my identity. It was shaping who I was, who I am. Thisretrospective attribution of importance to the developmentalinfluence of childhood place was very different from participants’descriptions of their childhood attitude to place. These had a naıve,taken-for-granted quality, with place being a lot of fun or just out theback door. Unlike the participants who reported a strong emotionalconnection to childhood place, both Neal and Jim denied that theirchildhood place experiences made any significant contribution totheir adult identity.

8.3. The arousal-interaction-pleasure model

The themes of adult recollections of childhood place experienceare captured in relatively succinct excerpts from participantsaccounts. However, the more complex pattern of child interactionwith place depicted in the upper arc of Fig. 1 is only revealed inmore extensive excerpts. The following passage from Bluey’saccount captures his place-induced excitement, his playful behav-ioural response, and a strong positive affect associated with thesense of mastery resulting from that behaviour. [There] was a longhill down to the house. I’d walk it and I’d [feel like] running, and I’d umget a real momentum up. And I’d start to leap. And that each time I’dleave the ground, I’d pick a point on the grass ahead of me to land, andeach leap I’d extend it more and more and the hill got steeper andsteeper, and by the point of the last bit of that hill I would just fly. Iwould just be having such a momentum going, and I’d pick a point thatwas way beyond what I could possibly reach. But I would always reachit, and I’d feel like I’d be in the air, and I’d be like I’ve still got anothertwo metres to go, and I’d make it, and I’d sort of make myself make it.So, that was always something I did [going down that hill. And thefeeling was] just fantastic, just fantastic. I was um. (smiles). I’d justfly, literally fly and I would be doing something that I couldn’t do, but Iwas doing it.

Other passages capture not only the pattern of arousal – play/exploration – pleasure, but also link aspects of adult identity to thisformative pattern. Mick reported deriving a great sense ofachievement from ascending the 1000 metre high hills of hischildhood. He attributed his high levels of motivation characteristicof his adult personality to childhood experiences of mastery in the

hills. You’d have this [huge] valley to climb out of. You’d think ‘That’sa long way up’. And away you’d go, put your head down and you’dsweat it out for the next 45 minutes. And there was always [a sense of]‘That’s great. We got there.’.I never felt defeated by that landscape,whereas in many other environments I felt quite defeated. It presentedme with so many opportunities to engage in enough challenge that Ifelt stretched, but not so much that I was over-stretched. and [felt]a sense of defeat. I think [that was responsible for my adult] sense of‘must do’, my get-up-and-go. The physical world is where I had most ofmy success and achievement as a kid, because I certainly had noneacademically and very limited socially.

Bluey attributes his adult aesthetic sensibility to a childhoodfascination with and pleasure in the material form of place. I’d justsort of wander, and there’d be points where I’d be literally observingevery rock or old bit of car body, or anything that was intriguing me.Rocks, I just loved rocks, I was always fascinated by rocks.Thatwaterfall had good rocks on it. Mossy rocks.I’d feel them. And there’dbe times of just wonder, you know like looking. I guess I was like I amnow with my [adult] intrigue of form. I love things that look intriguing.I love the material and how they’re placed. So yes, I was intrigued, Iguess. There were definitely little pockets on the property that I likedmore than the others. And I’d just. explore the rocks around youknow, literally, in some areas, I’d know every rock.. I was very awareof the environment. And I liked it, so that made me feel good to bearound that.

9. Discussion

While noting some variation in the place attachments reportedby participants, this study found enough similarities in the majorityof the accounts suggest a common process by which place attach-ment develops; and which shows many parallels with the devel-opmental process described by attachment theory. Attachmenttheorists describe an interactional pattern in which the infant’sdistress (arousal) is soothed by the attachment figure’s care-givingbehaviours, and which culminates in a positively affected sense ofmutual connectedness. Frequent repetition of this sequence stim-ulates and consolidates the infant’s internal developmentalprocesses, and gives rise to an unconscious internal working modelof the attachment relationship, which is characterised by a long-term affective bond (Ciompi, 1991; Lichtenberg, 1989; Schore, 1994;Sroufe, 1990). This study has proposed that a parallel pattern ofarousal-interaction-pleasure, shown in the upper arc of Fig. 1characterises childhood place experience. Extended excerpts frominterviews cited in 8.3 reflect this pattern of child-environmentinteraction as well the developmental influence of childhood placeexperience on adult identity. These findings support the proposi-tion that repeated enactments of the arousal-interaction-pleasurepattern generate an internal working model of the child’s rela-tionship with environment, which manifests consciously as a long-term affective bond to that environment known as placeattachment.

Five participants who reported strong place attachment senti-ments also described involuntary place memories in the form ofvivid re-experiencing during the interview of emotional states andsensory perceptions associated with childhood place experiences.These moments when childhood emotional states were re-livedduring interviews in full colour rather than black and whitedemonstrated characteristics that Siegel (1999) attributes toimplicit memory. The absence of narrative structure and subjectivesense of recollection (reflected in use of the present tense in theinterviews) suggest that such memories are part of implicitmemory. As such, these potent, affect-laden images of childhoodplace provide further support for the presence of internal workingmodels of childhood place experience. The two participants who

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did not report these vivid involuntary memories during the inter-view process expressed little or no sense of adult place attachment,suggesting the absence of robust internal working models ofchildhood place.

Siegel (1999) also suggests that unconscious internal workingmodels are reflected in the themes of explicit autobiographicalmemory. This study argues that themes emerging from partici-pants’ remembrances of childhood place experience reflect internalworking models of childhood place experience and something ofthe processes by which they arise. The study found the five themesemerging through phenomenological reduction and these appearto support the proposed arousal-interaction-pleasure develop-mental model of place attachment.

The experience of pleasure as a result of childhood interactionswith the environment is central to this developmental model ofplace attachment. The presence of positive affect resulting fromchildhood interactions with place is clearly demonstrated by theemergence of pleasure as the most prominent theme of the inter-views. It just fills me with the most buoyant sense of joy. That wasa lot of fun. Participants associated pleasure with the activities ofplace-exploration, place-play and sensory perception, as well aswith the subjective senses of mastery, freedom and adventure. Thefive participants who provided highly detailed recall of positivelyaffected experiences of childhood place, also reported a stronglong-term affective bond to place, supporting the idea of a devel-opmental link between positively affected childhood place expe-rience and place attachment.

The developmental role of childhood place experience is furthersupported by the emergence of identity as a prominent theme ofthe interviews. Attachment theory holds that the internal organi-sation resulting from emotional self-regulation and the uncon-scious working model of the attachment relationship gives rise tothe psychological structure of the self (Schore, 1994; Siegel, 1999;Sroufe, 1996). Suggesting a parallel to this developmental process,Bluey, Jane, Phillip and Mick attribute their adult place attachmentto their childhood place experience, and expressed the belief thattheir childhood place experiences also contributed to theirpsychological development and adult identity. In extendedexcerpts (Section 8.3), Bluey and Mick explicitly attribute thedevelopment of specific aspects of adult personality to childhoodplace experience. Conversely participants with very limited child-hood place memories, Neal and Jim, stated they did not believe thatchildhood place experiences had contributed to their adult identity.The emergence of this link between childhood place experienceand adult identity as a prominent theme, along with some partic-ipants’ reflective awareness of that link, further supports thedevelopmental model offered here (Fig. 1). In a similar findingKorpela and Hartig (1996) concluded that experiences of positiveaffect in child-environment interactions contribute to identityconsolidation (developmental) processes.

Five participants used the word ‘love’ (of place), accompanied bycongruent non-verbal communications. This was understood asindicating a long-term affective bond to place (place attachment).Four of these participants also reported experiencing strong griefassociated with loss of childhood place, providing further supportfrom the interviews for the presence of a strong affective attach-ment to place. The prominence of these two themes in adultremembrances of childhood place experience, and participants’assertion that their love of place arose out of their childhood placeexperience, supports the proposal that an affective bond to place(place attachment) emerges through childhood place experience.

Conversely Jim, whose memories of childhood place experiencecontained very limited affect or sensory detail, expressed onlysuperficial place attachment. Neal whose place memories weretinged with anxiety rather than pleasure denied any attachment to

his place of origin. Neither reported any deep immersion in child-hood experience suggestive of implicit memory during theirinterviews. Although both reported they experienced some placeattachment as adults, their descriptions lacked noticeablecongruent non-verbal expressions that would have given themgreater substance. Also, neither Jim nor Neal reported any sense ofgrief associated with separation from childhood place. The lack ofdetailed childhood place memories and strong place attachmentsentiments from the accounts of Neal and Jim suggest the absenceof strong internal working models of childhood place.

This range of results across all participants suggests some vari-ability in the developmental processes that give rise to adult placeattachment. This finding accords with Chawla’s (1992) identificationof a qualitative spread of different types of adult place attachments.While it is possible that Neal and Jim’s accounts reflect a failure of theinterview procedure to evoke implicit memory, the results areconsistent with the explanation that their childhood place experi-ences were not generalised into robust internal working models withstrong subjective feelings of place attachment. This finding does notundermine the proposed model, but suggests that where childhoodplace experience is not consolidated into an internal working model,place attachment is weak. While Neal’s experience of childhood placeanxiety appears to have undermined the development of a robustplace attachment, the reasons why Jim’s childhood place experiencesdid not consolidate into a strong place attachment remain unclear.

Attachment theory uses a continuum of anxiety-security toevaluate the quality of attachment (Bowlby, 1974). The attachmentfigure’s proximity and emotional attunement engenders feelings ofsecurity and wellbeing. Threats to security give rise to anxiety inthe short term and attachment disorders if sustained. Findings ofthis study suggest that for the majority of participants, a sense ofsecurity of place was associated with feelings of wellbeing, a senseof the soul’s being nurtured, and disruptions to place attachmentwere associated with strong feelings of grief and anxiety, similar tothose observed in young children in response to separation fromattachment figures (Bowlby, 1980). The developmental model ofplace attachment proposed here requires frequent re-enactment ofthe arousal-interaction-pleasure pattern in order that childhoodplace experience be generalised and internalised into a stronginternal working model of place. The security/familiarity themeprovides support for this aspect of the proposed model. The senseof familiarity and security reported by participants expressingstrong place attachment feelings are unlikely to have emergedwithout those participants undertaking frequent interactions withthe physical environment in childhood.

Attachment theory argues that by settling distress through care-giving and soothing behaviours, the attachment figure acts as anexternal emotional regulator until the infant can internalise thisfunction for himself (Trevarthen, 1993; Schore, 1994). The restor-ative (soothing) qualities of natural environments (Altman &Wohlwill, 1983; Kaplan, 1995; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989) are hereunderstood as being somewhat analogous to the soothing effect ofhuman care-giving. Korpela (1989) took this analogy further,finding that place functions as external regulator for emotionalstates. Likewise, several participants in this study described usingchildhood place to regulate emotional distress. Bluey was very clearthat he used his time wandering the farm each weekend to recoverfrom his negative experience of school and create a sense of calmself belief. Similarly, in a study of autobiographical writing, Chawla(1992) found that the most common reported benefit of fondlyremembered childhood places was ‘that they form an internalcentre of stability and calm’ in adulthood.

Alongside these parallels between human attachment and placeattachment, there are some important differences. Human attach-ment is universal – a fundamental requirement of human

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development. Like this study, Chawla (1986) found that placeattachment is not universal, or at least there appears to be a muchgreater range in its quality and perceived importance than there isfor human attachment. The need she identified for place theoriststo define the different types of place attachment still standsunaddressed. Also, attachment theorists see the first three years oflife as most important in the attachment relationship, as this iswhen brain development is greatest (Siegel, 1999). Participants inthis study estimated that most of the place memories described inthe interview date from between the ages of 8 and 13, with nonedating from an age younger than five. Place attachment emerges ata later age than human attachment (Sobel, 1990). However, there isnothing in the study to suggest that the circular interactionaldynamic depicted in Fig. 1 is not operational from a much earlierage, but that the child’s sense of place attachment only emergeslong after the strong emotional attachment to the attachmentfigure.

Another difference between the two is the absence of an iden-tified attachment figure in place attachment. In human attachment,the attachment figure is another human being. A shared biologicalsubstrate allows for the broad intersubjective, deeply attunedrelationship necessary for the psychobiological development of theinfant. The sophisticated intersubjective attunement underpinninghuman attachment has no obvious parallel in place attachment.Instead of a clearly identifiable, deeply attuned figure, placeattachment is more usefully conceptualised in terms of an attach-ment field. In attachment theory, this field is seen as arousing theyoung child’s fascination, excitement and anxiety – the antithesis ofthe attachment figure who soothes, settles and regulates emotionalarousal (Marvin et al., 2004). Yet, despite this absence of an iden-tified, attuned figure, four of the participants reported a subjectivesense of reciprocity about their relationship with childhood place.They described feeling loved and nurtured by childhood place,adding support to the transactional view of place as a rich andactive presence supporting psychological development andwellbeing.

In the most thorough exploration to date of the links betweenplace attachment and human attachment, Giuliani (2003) looks toAinsworth’s definition of an affectional bond to compare the two.Drawing on Ainsworth’s criteria of longevity, uniqueness of theattachment figure, and the experience of security and pleasure inproximity and distress on separation, Giuliani finds that on balance,the differences between place attachment and human attachmentoutweigh the similarities. However, the model of place attachmentdevelopment supported by the majority of the accounts in thisstudy suggests important similarities between the two forms ofattachment. Four of the participants in this study report placeattachment to be as long lasting and as particular as humanattachment. Five participants reported the experience of securityand pleasure in proximity and distress on separation from place.

Regarding Ainsworth’s criterion of uniqueness, four participantsexpressed stronger feelings for remembered childhood places thancurrent adult place. The picture of place attachment emerging fromthis study is that, while feelings of pleasure and security arisingfrom proximity to, and distress on separation from, place may bemore subtle and take longer to register than similar feelings asso-ciated with human attachment figures, such feelings are definitelya part of the experience of place attachment. Overall, whileacknowledging differences between the two forms of attachment,this study finds important similarities in the childhood experienceat the core of both human attachment and place attachment.

However, the study is limited in its scope. It sketches out a basictheoretical model of the development of place attachment fromchildhood experience of place. The retrospective, subjectiveaccounts of the interviews lend support to that model. However,

this can only be considered preliminary support, and there is needfor stronger evidence. An obvious limitation of the study is the verysmall number of participants, a product of the qualitative orienta-tion. Also, while the proposed model draws on Stern’s (1985)‘inferential leap’ of integrating subjective and objective approaches,this study only attempts to replicate one of the two complimentaryepistemological approaches that Stern argued were necessary fora holistic picture of child development. Empirical observations ofchildren-in-place have not been undertaken. Instead the theoret-ical model draws on observational studies previously described inthe literature. However, in the light of the major developments inattachment theory that have occurred since, there is need for anupdating of Hart (1979) and Moore’s (1986) rich observationalstudies of children’s engagement with place.

Also this study has limited its focus to the child’s relationshipwith the physical environment. The model proposed here has notaddressed social constructivist notions of place. This is a reflectionof the limited scope of the study rather than an implicit denial ofthe role of culture in place attachment. The model proposed here iscompatible with Moore’s (1986) modification to Bronfenbrenner’secological model of child development, which provides an over-arching theoretical modal that incorporates both place and culturalinfluences on child development. A promising area for futureresearch is the longitudinal perspective of the interplay of thesetwo influences over the course of human developmental.

A further challenge to the inferences drawn from this study isthe well-recognised unreliability of adult recollections of childhoodevents. This study argues that while explicit memory of childhoodevents is unreliable, the subjective emotional states experiencedduring deep remembrance and the five emergent themes areassociated with unconscious internal working models. Theseimplicit memory generalisations of repeated childhood experiencesof place are more robust than the reconstructed recollections ofexplicit memory.

Two participants in this study reported an adult place attach-ment that did not appear to have developed from childhoodexperience, or at least not according to the developmental modelprovided here. This finding suggests the possibility of at least onealternative to the model offered here. In spite of Chawla’s (1986)identification of different types of place attachment, there is yet noequivalent of attachment theory’s four experimentally validatedtypes of attachment (Goldberg, 2000), and certainly no mapping ofthe different processes that give rise to the various forms of placeattachment. Ultimately however, much of the evidence and theo-retical detail are most likely to emerge through longitudinal studiesand these are sadly lacking (Hay, 1998). Hopefully this study canprovide some impetus towards such work.

This study elicited involuntary childhood place memories withthe characteristics of implicit memory from those participantsreporting a strong adult place attachment. The numerous expres-sions of remembered place-pleasure support the proposition thatoutdoor environments elicit place-exploration and place-playbehaviours in children which give rise to frequent positive affectstates. The frequent repetition of this child-environment trans-actional pattern (Fig. 1) is implied in the security and familiarityassociated with childhood place by these same participants. Suchrepetition allows for the generalisation of this pattern into aninternal working model of the relationship with childhood placewhich manifests subjectively as long-term positively affected bondto place. The implicit memory characteristics of the most vivid placememories reflect the presence of internal working models ofchildhood place experience. Reports by these same participants ofthe use of childhood place to regulate emotional distress, of a posi-tively affected childhood sense of place-security, and of intense griefon separation from place, all suggest strong parallels to the

P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22 21

developmental role of the attachment relationship. These parallelsalong with a belief expressed by the same group of participants thatchildhood place experience has shaped their adult identity supportsthe argument for a developmental role for childhood place experi-ence. The study also details the absence of such reports fromparticipants who described a weak adult place attachment. Theseresults combine to provide preliminary support for the develop-mental model of place attachment offered and the proposition thatthe process by which place attachment develops has strong simi-larities to that by which human attachment develops.

The parallels between human attachment and place attachmentappear to be significant enough to be recognised by severalparticipants who describe a subjective sense of being shaped or‘parented’ by place. Similarly, the wide use of the term ‘MotherEarth’ signifies a broader cultural recognition of close parallelsbetween the two forms of attachment. These links have been rec-ognised both transculturally and transhistorically (Malpas, 1999).Giuliani (2003) argues the need for a theory of attachment andaffect that includes ‘persons, places and even animals and physicalobjects’. By extending the dialogue between place theory andattachment theory, this study has begun to address the absence ofa developmental theory of place attachment as well as attachmenttheory’s lack of attention to place as an interactive presencecontributing to human developmental processes. In identifyingsignificant parallels between children’s experience of place and thehuman attachment relationship, particularly the way bothphenomena stimulate human development, give rise to long-termaffective bonds and contribute to adult identity, this study is a steptowards an integrated developmental theory.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to John Cameron for his generous andinformed comments on this research.

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