Patricia McKinsey Crittenden

Who is Patricia McKinsey Crittenden?

Patricia McKinsey Crittenden is a theorist in developmental psychopathology. With Mary Ainsworth’s guidance and input from John Bowlby, she developed the Dynamic-Maturational Model of attachment and adaptation. This model emphasizes adaptive organization that becomes more complex with maturity; disorganization is thought to be a fleeting state indicative of individuals’ changing strategies. Specifically, Ainsworth’s conceptualization of attachment as strategic protective functioning was expanded by Crittenden to address adaptation in families with maltreatment or mental illness. Crittenden also developed and adapted a series of age-specific assessments of attachment, focusing on ways in which the organization of information processing shapes self- and child-protective attachment strategies.

Ainsworth’s infant patterns are seen in the DMM as changing with maturation and adapting dynamically to the life contexts in which children use them. This also implies that the distribution of the patterns in different cultural contexts varies to promote adaptation to varied geopolitical circumstances.