- Parental emotional unavailability or neglect creates a great deal of distress for children who will initially engage in behaviors to reestablish attachment with the parent. If the neglect persists, however, the child is thought to defend against feelings of abandonment and fear by becoming detached and disinterested in the attachment figure. [1]
- Moberly first proposed the model of “defensive detachment” from the same-sex parent as a cause of homosexuality, although the concept of defensive detachment itself was not new. [2]