CONCEPT
Monotropy
Bowlby's claim — controversial in his lifetime, practically decisive for the AI moment — that the infant forms a hierarchy of attachment with one figure at the top, and that disruption at the apex produces grief of a qualitatively different order than disruption at subsidiary levels.
Monotropy is the principle that an infant does not attach equally to all available caregivers but organizes her attachments hierarchically. One figure — usually but not necessarily the mother — occupies the position of primary attachment figure: the principal target of proximity-seeking in high stress, the ultimate secure base, the figure whose absence produces the most intense separation protest. Other figures matter but serve subsidiary functions. The principle extends beyond human caregivers to practices, tools, and mediums: every knowledge worker carries a hierarchy of attachment to her professional instruments, and disruption of the primary attachment produces effects categorically different from disruption of subsidiary ones. The designer whose primary attachment is to hand-drawing experiences AI image generation as a different kind of threat than the designer whose primary attachment is to visual problem-solving. Same technology, fundamentally different psychological consequence.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Bowlby advanced monotropy against