Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22

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Journal of Environmental Psychology

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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 a b s t r a c t

Article history: Place theory offers no explanation of the developmental processes by which place attachment arises.
Available online 13 August 2009 Drawing on recent findings in human attachment theory, this study offers a developmental model of the
process by which place attachment emerges from a childhood place experience. A pattern of positively
Keywords: affected experiences of place in childhood are generalised into an unconscious internal working model of
Place attachment place which manifests subjectively as a long-term positively affected bond to place known as place
Attachment theory
attachment. Qualitative analysis of adult remembrance of childhood place experience provides support
Child development
for this model and finds important parallels in the developmental processes underpinning place
attachment and human attachment as well as some differences.
! 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction social place theorists as politically regressive in ignoring the social

The concept of place refers to the subjective experience of
embodied human existence in the material world. It is a paradoxical
concept with a meaning that is readily grasped, but difficult to
define. In their review of place attachment literature, Low and
Altman (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 conceptual
coherence in place research. Patterson and Williams (2005) suggest
that no systematic theory of place has emerged because the domain
of place research is composed of multiple research traditions based
on very different, often incompatible epistemological foundations
and philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality. Some
aspects of place research are best dealt with quantitatively, while
for other aspects a qualitative approach is more appropriate. They
argue that if researchers grounded in any one research paradigm
recognise the limits to that paradigm and adopt an attitude of
openness 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 and
humanistic approaches explore the deeper significance of place to
human existence and the subjective, emotional quality of people’s
relationship to places. This tradition has been criticised by posi-
tivistic place researchers for the lack of an empirical basis, and by
* Tel.: þ61 2 9382 1412.
E-mail address: paul.morgan@sesiahs.health.nsw.gov.au
forces by which the meaning of place is contested (Creswell, 2004).
A second tradition, which Patterson and Williams (2005) name
psychometrics, explores the relationship between the physical envi-
ronment and the human psyche by attributing numeric measures to
psychosocial 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 for
reducing holistic phenomena to a mechanistic set of interacting
objective elements, and failing to provide any account of the subjec-
tive aspects of the human experience of place (Malpas, 1999). The
third tradition, social constructivism, while happy to embrace
subjectivity, sees it as a socially constructed phenomenon (Massey,
1994). Constructivist place theorists have been criticised for seeking
to explain place solely in terms of the social processes and failing to
account for the embodied, individuated nature of subjective experi-
ence and the link that the body creates between subjectivity and the
objective material world (Malpas, 1999). Following Patterson and
Williams (2005), this study recognises that a broad discussion of the
phenomenon of place attachment will draw on contributions to place
literature from each of these research approaches.
2. Place attachment
Most authors recognise an emotional or affective component in
the concept of place attachment. But the word emotion, like place,
has an easy-to-understand, hard-to-define quality making place
attachment if anything, more conceptually elusive than place itself.
Giuliani and Feldman (1993) identify 11 different definitions of
place attachment in a single review collection of articles. In this
study place attachment refers to the experience of a long-term

0272-4944/$ – see front matter ! 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.07.001
12 P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22
affective bond to a particular geographic area and the meaning
attributed to that bond. Where a person lives in a particular locale
over an extended period, that person will often develop feelings of
affection for, and a sense of belonging, or being of that place, so that
place becomes ‘one anchor of his or her identity’ (Hay, 1998).
Indeed Proshansky, Fabian, and Kaminoff (1983) coined the term
place identity to signify the importance of the physical environ-
ment in shaping the human sense of self. Early studies tended to
conceive of place attachment as static. More recently a dynamic
view has emerged, so that while place attachment is understood as
enduring, it is also seen as changing over time (Hay,1998).
For many individuals, childhood place experience plays an
important role in adult identity (Cobb, 1977; Cooper, 1992; Hester &
O’Donnell, 1987; Pearce, 1977). Film and literature offer numerous
examples of adult identity being profoundly shaped by childhood
place experience. Hay (1998), investigating place attachment over
the entire human life span found that feelings of connection or
belonging to place increased as people aged, and that place
attachments formed in childhood were stronger than those formed
later 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 that
the foundations of place attachment are laid down in middle
childhood (Sobel, 1990).
Descriptive studies also indicate a qualitative difference between
adult and childhood experience of place. Adult accounts of place
attachment tend to highlight their feelings for place, the meanings
attributed to those feelings, and an awareness of the sociocultural
influence on place attachment (Massey, 1994; Twigger-Ross &
Uzzell, 1996). On the other hand, enquiries into children’s attitude
towards place describe an unselfconscious, taken-for-granted
approach to place, where the physical environment is valued for
what you can do in it, rather than in and of itself or for social
meanings (Hart, 1979; Hay, 1998; Moore, 1986). Descriptive studies
have identified common themes of children’s engagement with
place. These include: children’s preference for natural over man-
made environments (Jones & Cunningham, 1999); children’s
sensuous engagement with place (Cobb, 1977; Sebba, 1991);
exploration and place-play as inherently pleasurable, self-directed
learning activities (Sebba, 1991); and children’s use of place for
emotional 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 can
evoke powerful feelings and exert great influence over adult
identity (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 time
reflecting on memories of childhood place rather than engaging
with their immediate surrounds. ‘Our places of origin shape us
whether we like it or not’ (Chawla, 1992). This importance attrib-
uted to the autobiographical memory of place should not be
confused with veracity. Sebba found a marked disjunction between
adult reports of a remembered childhood preference for outdoor
settings (96.5%) and children’s reported preferences for outdoor
settings (46%), indicating that adult remembrance of childhood
experience is subject to a degree of reconstruction and reinter-
pretation. Nonetheless, the strong affects commonly experienced
during adult remembrance of childhood place experience led
Chawla to argue that ‘this backward glance is an in important
dimension of [place] attachment (Chawla, 1992).
However, the processes that link adult identity with childhood
place experiences are unclear. A number of qualitative studies of
children’s use of place attribute place attachment to the support
and stimulation of human developmental processes that place
offers children. Hart (1979) and Olwig (1989) link place attachment
to opportunities the physical environment offers children for the
realisation of the developmental drive for mastery. Some authors
attribute developmental significance to the self-directed and
pleasurable nature of children’s place-based play and exploration
(Cobb, 1977; Hart, 1979; Porteous, 1990; Schachtel, 1959).
Sebba (1991) argues that the developmental drive towards
sensory integration and the drive to obtain information about the
environment underpin a heightened attentiveness to place in
childhood. Also, a developmental shift in early adolescence from
the primacy of sensory to cognitive engagement with the world is
accompanied by a dimming of sensory perception. Prior to the
emergence of abstract thinking in adolescence, sensory perception
is more vivid and pleasurable. Consequently, memory of childhood
place is fixed in the context of an intense and ecstatic sensory
awareness (Cobb, 1977; Sebba, 1991). For these researchers, place
attachment to a greater or lesser extent is established through the
developmental processes of childhood. Some argue that children’s
observed 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 place
attachment is not universal. Place attachment quality and strength
varies widely with some adults experiencing either no or negative
feelings about their place of origin. The memory of childhood place is
central to adult identity for some, but for others, place has little
bearing on their sense of self. Chawla identified seven different
qualitative categories of place attachment, but explanation of
differences in the formative process responsible for the different
strengths 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 traditions
of place research, Daniel Stern (1985) identified a similar episte-
mological impasse confronting developmental psychology. In order
to progress, developmental psychology required an accurate
working hypothesis of infantile subjective experience. Stern argued
that such a hypothesis of infantile subjective reality needed to
include both developmental psychology’s observed infant and the
subjectively reconstructed infantile experience of psychoanalysis,
but that neither approach alone provided an adequate account of
human psychological development. He pointed out that some of the
tenets 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 must
make inferential leaps. As soon as we try to make inferences
about. the actual experience of the real infant – that is, to build
in qualities of subjective experience such as a sense of self – we
are thrown back to our own subjective experience as the main
1
Strictly speaking, the use of the term attachment theory is a misnomer, as it
represents 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 rapidly
expanding, that it is yet to attract a broadly accepted identifying name. Some
researchers have named it ‘infant brain research’. However, this name overlooks the
very significant social aspects of the field and restricts the age range of research. For
its part ‘attachment theory’ does not explicitly include the considerable neuro--
scientific elements of the field. The term attachment theory is used here because it
has wide recognition, because it includes those aspects of the field most pertinent
to this study, and because it has a complimentarity vis-à-vis the term place
attachment.
 P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22
source of inspiration. Here, then, is the problem: the subjective
life of the adult is the main source of inference about the infant’s
felt quality of social experience. A degree of circularity is
unavoidable. 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 epistemologically
conflicted approaches show a high degree of complementarity, and
the integration of objectivist, scientific approaches with subjective
clinical methods resulted in a new holistic conception of how the
human mind/brain develops.
This overarching coherence is widely understood to have origi-
nated in the work of John Bowlby (1969, 1974, 1980). His attachment
theory, developed from naturalistic observations of infants and
mothers, described attachment as infant behaviours that elicit adult
proximity and care-giving responses. These instinctive behaviours
have their roots in neurophysiological structures of the body. In
a break with behaviourist orthodoxy of the period, Bowlby also
explained attachment behaviours as being motivated by subjective
emotional states. He argued that long-term emotional bonds to
particular individuals are a basic part of human nature. An attach-
ment bond to someone endows feelings of security and wellbeing in
the presence of that person. Attachment behaviours are triggered by
feelings of anxiety and distress experienced by young children on
separation from parental caregivers (Bowlby, 1974).
By using subjective understanding of emotional states to explain
observed infant behaviours, Bowlby integrated supposedly incom-
patible epistemologies to provide a holistic scientific theory of great
scope and explanatory power. Previously under the dominance of
behaviourism, emotions had been dismissed as subjective
phenomena, unmeasurable, and irrelevant to the objective scientific
study of the human psychology. However, with the development of
a procedure known as the ‘Strange Situation’, attachment theory’s
recognition of emotional states was validated using a predictive
empirical methodology (Colin, 1996). Attachment theory legiti-
mised the scientific study of internal states and repositioned
emotions as central to understanding the human mind.
In this transactional model of human development, the
simplistic nature versus nurture debate has been replaced by
a model, where human development is shaped by a complex
interplay of environmental and genetic factors occurring in the
context of the attachment relationship (Rutter, 2002; Sameroff &
Fiese, 2000; Siegel, 2001). From birth, infant and caregiver are
engaged in a reciprocal system of sensory stimulation and non-
verbal communication of emotional states, and these sequences of
interaction usually culminate in the shared experience of mutual
delight (Schore, 1994). Frequent daily experiences of care-giving
and emotional attunement with the attachment figure are gener-
alised in the infant’s mind into mental representations of self and
caregiver that become unconscious psychological structures known
as internal working models (Bowlby, 1980). These internal models
are enduring psychological structures and form the template for all
subsequent social relationships. Internal working models manifest
subjectively as the long-lasting emotional bond known as love
(Sroufe, 1990).
Attachment interactions also shape the phenotypic expression of
brain structure. The vast majority of connections between human
brain cells are established postnatally. Advanced brain imaging
techniques show the normal development of brain microstructure
in infancy is highly dependant on the quality of the attachment
relationship (de Haan, Belsky, Reid, Volein, & Johnson, 2004; Schore,
1997). The caregiver’s capacity to attune to the infant’s emotional
state, and to engage in complex sequences of reciprocal behavioural
interactions are fundamental to these developments. Where these
13
abilities are present, attachment is secure, and large numbers of
synaptic connections develop. However, where the attachment
relationship is significantly disrupted, synaptic connectivity and
psychological functioning are markedly impaired (Greenspan, 1999;
Rutter et al., 1997; Siegel, 1999; Zeanah, Boris, & Larrieu, 1997).
Attachment relationships also influence the way memory is
structured (Siegel, 1999, pp. 29–33). Implicit memory is composed
of internal working models, the generalised representations of
attachment interactions. Implicit memories do not require
conscious attention for their formation, and normally lie outside of
conscious awareness. They are fixed in childhood, and are charac-
terised by the absence of subjective sense of remembrance. Explicit
autobiographical memory, the memory of self across time, is
characterised by a subjective sense of recollection and narrative
structuring. The storage of explicit memory involves a process
known as ‘cortical consolidation’. Each act of explicit remembering
involves the reorganisation of existing memory traces into new,
unpredictable associative linkages. Internal working models have
an important influence over cortical consolidation, shaping both
the content and narrative structuring of autobiographical memory.
Themes reflecting internal working models bring coherence and
continuity to explicit memory (Siegel, 1999).
4. Emotion and the self: emergent phenomena
More recently attachment theory has expanded to include an
identity theory, self psychology (Cicchetti & Beeghly, 1994). It
describes how the psychological structure of the self emerges from
the 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 providing
soothing, attachment figures regulate emotional distress. With
time and frequent repetition, infants establish an internal working
model of this care-giving role and through this process, learn to
regulate emotional arousal for themselves. The process of
emotional regulation that emerges in the attachment relationship
plays a major role in establishing internal coherence in the infant
(Schore, 1994).
Brain imaging studies show that the processes of emotional
regulation and integration of mental functions both utilise the
same neural structures within the limbic system (Siegel, 1998).
Emotions are now understood as emergent phenomena arising
from the integration of all domains of physical and mental activity
within the body (Damasio, 1998; Sroufe, 1996). The subjective sense
of self (identity) arises from the experience of integration, the
holistic, internal organisation that emerges from the generalisation
of repeated experiences of affect regulation within the attachment
relationship (Ciompi, 1991; Schore, 1994; Siegel, 1999; Sroufe,
1996). Three aspects of attachment interactions are essential for the
emergence of a healthy sense of self: shared pleasure, soothing of
distress and repetition (Schore, 1994).
5. Lack of a developmental theory of place attachment
The last thirty years have witnessed enormous advances in the
field of developmental psychology and neurobiology. Attachment
theory 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. By
contrast, place theorists offer no systematic explanation of how the
complex relationship between place, identity, affect and cognition
develops throughout childhood. Place theory has failed to capitalise
on progress in developmental science. Lack of dialogue between
developmental psychology and environmental psychology’s place
14 P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22
theory is apparent from the very limited referencing across these
fields in scientific journals. The few attempts to build a coherent
developmental theory of place attachment (Chawla, 1992; Hart,
1979; Moore, 1986) draw on theories that predate the recent
advances in developmental science.
Low and Altman (1992) noted a growing interest in exploring
the ‘social relations that a place signifies’, and since the late 1980s
the majority of studies have tended to focus on the social
construction of place attachment. In that time most investigations
of the relationship between place and identity have relied heavily
on adult focused, cognitive and social frameworks, largely ignoring
psychobiological developmental processes, as though place
attachment arrives fully formed in adulthood (Jorgensen & Sted-
man, 2001; Massey, 1994; Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996). Place
attachment 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 of
the need for research in this area, the absence of a systematic
explanation of the process by which place attachment emerges
remains a significant gap in the literature of place.
6. Integrating attachment and place attachment theory
The environmental and developmental branches of psychology
both stand to benefit from a greater dialogue between attachment
theory and place theory. This study brings together recent devel-
opments in these two fields. Attachment theory offers a theory that
provides useful insights for the elaboration of the developmental
perspective that place theory currently lacks. However attachment
theory attributes no developmental significance to the child’s
relationship with the physical environment – place. Sameroff’s
(1975) transactional theory describes human development as
emerging from a relationship of mutual interaction between child
and environment. The reciprocity and mutual influence between
caregiver and child central to attachment theory exemplify trans-
actional processes.
In spite of place theorists identifying the important role that
physical environment plays an in human development (Chawla,
1992; Hart, 1979; Moore, 1989; Proshansky et al., 1983), for
attachment theorists, transactional theory applies only to the social
environment, not the physical environment. The role of place in
developmental processes remains largely overlooked by attach-
ment theorists. Where the literature of children’s place describes
a rich interactive relationship in which place nurtures and stimu-
lates children’s development through interactions of play, explo-
ration, sensory stimulation and emotional regulation, attachment
theory sees place only as a passive backdrop for the attachment
relationship. In comparison with the detailed analysis attachment
theory affords the human attachment relationship, the role of place
as a vital, interactive presence stimulating and supporting the
child’s development remains uninvestigated.
Emotion is a crucial part of the relationship between person and
environment (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1984; Russell & Snodgrass, 1987;
Tuan, 1974; Wohlwill & Heft, 1987), and is central to the concept of
place attachment. However, emotion has proved ‘the most
problem-fraught sector in contemporary psychology’ (Giuliani,
2003), prompting Russell and Snodgrass (1987) to observe with
respect to environmental psychology, that ‘the relationship
between emotion and environment thus remains largely
uncharted’. Because emotions do not easily lend themselves to the
empirical strategy of measurement, psychometrics has largely
ignored them, favouring the investigation of behaviour and cogni-
tion in order to progress psychological theory. Mehrabian and
Russell (1974) developed a three dimensional model for measuring
the emotional qualities of environments, but to date, use of this
psychometric tool has not been widely repeated in environmental
psychology. However, the role of emotion is seen as central to
attachment theory. Place attachment theory could profitably make
use of both the detail and the epistemological approach of attach-
ment theory.
Attachment theory recognises that subjective affective states
drive observed human behaviour. ‘There is no action and no
thought that is not affectively motivated. Motivation underpins
agency and motivation is always emotional’ (Basch, 1988, pp. 68–
69). The attachment theorist Lichtenberg (1989) has proposed that
human 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 the
exploration-assertion system are of interest here. The attachment
system motivates proximity and care seeking behaviours. The
exploration system motivates engagement with the environment.
According to Lichtenberg, the experience of exploration and agency
in the world produces positively affected sense of efficacy and
competence. Lichtenberg (1989) suggests that behaviours promp-
ted by his exploration-assertion motivational system (play and
exploration) result in positive affect, motivating engagement with
the world other than the attachment figure.
The attachment system activates a positively affected care-
giving interaction between attachment figure and infant. Frequent
repetition of this interaction results in patterning of the behaviour
and associated emotional states, and the emergence of an uncon-
scious psychological structure (internal working model of the
relationship) which manifests in conscious awareness as a long-
term, specific affective bond towards the attachment figure. The
character of the internal working model (as template for all
subsequent social relationships) is shaped by the generalised
quality of these attachment interactions. Where the positive quality
of the interactions is significantly compromised by negative
emotional states of the attachment figure, the attachment is
described as insecure (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978).
Marvin, Cooper, Hoffman, and Powell (2002) have developed
a model of child behaviour in relation to the attachment figure
resulting from the interplay of the attachment and exploration
motivational system. Their Circle of Security (COS) model describes
the child’s circular pattern of movement through the physical
environment (called ‘the world’ in attachment theory), that begins
and ends with the attachment figure. When the exploration system
is activated, the child moves away from the attachment figure to
explore and play. When the child becomes distressed, anxious or
tired, the attachment system is activated and he seeks proximity to,
and emotional regulation from, the attachment figure. The model
emphasises the emotional states and developmental needs
underpinning this circular pattern, and explains how a child’s
developmental trajectory is shaped by their patterned experience
of interaction with the attachment figure (Marvin et al., 2002).
The physical environment has no role in this model. Motivation
to explore and play is located wholly in the child, rather than in
a relationship between child and environment. Striniste and Moore
(1989) contest such a non-transactional construction of the child’s
relationship with the physical environment. ‘Motivation [is] both
a quality inherent to the child, which determines how the child will
use the environment, and a quality of the environment, which has
the potential to draw the child’s involvement’ (p. 25). Place is a vital,
fascinating presence that draws in the child. Fascination is the
human response to environments or ‘circumstances that call on the
effortless attention [and] are intrinsically compelling’ (Kaplan,
1995, p. 172). The integration of this understanding of the physical
environment as an interactive presence influencing child behaviour
and attachment theory’s detailed interactional model of human
development points the way towards a developmental theory of
 P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22
place attachment. This study proposes a variation to the Circle of
Security model to one in which the child’s pattern of behaviour is
depicted as to and fro’ between two antithetical poles – physical
environment and attachment figure.
Fig. 1 depicts this integrated developmental model of human
attachment and place attachment. The diagram outlines the inter-
actional pattern emerging from integration of the attachment
system and the exploration-assertion motivational system. The
upper arc of the diagram represents activation of the exploration-
assertion motivational system. The child’s exposure to the physical
environment elicits arousal of this motivational system, resulting in
internal states such as fascination or excitement, and a consequent
movement away from the attachment figure to exploration and
play interactions with the environment. These place interactions
generate positively affected senses of mastery, adventure, freedom
as well as sensory pleasure. The lower part of the diagram repre-
sents the attachment motivational system. When interaction with
the outdoor environment elicits pain (through injury), or anxiety
(through perceived threat or overlong absence from the attachment
figure), the attachment motivational system is engaged overriding
the exploration system. The child seeks proximity to and comfort
from the attachment figure. Interaction with the attachment figure
results in regulation of emotional arousal and a positively affected
sense of connection. When the child’s need for connection and
regulation is satisfied, environmental cues stimulate the explora-
tion motivational system causing it to override the attachment
system, reinitiating the cycle. This sequence results in a to and fro’
movement between attachment figure and environment, and
a cyclical pattern of emotional arousal, interaction and positive
affect.
Using a pluralistic combination of attachment theory’s holistic
model of human development and place theory’s recognition of
a transactional role for the physical environment in human devel-
opment, this study proposes a developmental model in which place
attachment emerges from a child-environment interactional
sequence of arousal, exploration/play and pleasure. An internal
working model of the attachment relationship develops from the
patterning of repeated positively affected interactions with the
attachment figure. In a similar process, the day-to-day pattern of
Fig. 1. Integrated model of human attachment and place attachment
15
a child’s positively affected exploration/play/mastery and sensory
interactions with her environment is internalised into an uncon-
scious internal working model of that relationship. The long-term
affective bond known as place attachment is the conscious
subjective manifestation of that internal working model. This is the
process by which place attachment develops.
7. Research method
This study explores if there is preliminary support for the
developmental model of place attachment presented here, by
investigating if qualitative accounts provide grounds for the prop-
osition that a long-term affective bond to place develops from
a childhood pattern of positively affected interactions with place.
The study uses qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews of
adults to look for indications of a process of internalisation and
generalisation of positively affected childhood place experiences
into internal working models of childhood place relationships
which manifest consciously as place attachment. It is argued that
qualitative accounts of subjective adult remembrance of childhood
place experiences will contain common themes reflecting the
influence of internal working models of childhood place experience
on explicit memory. Attachment theory also theorises that the
attachment relationship is central to the development of the self,
and the study also investigates whether there is further support for
the model presented here (Fig. 1) in the form of participants’
identification of a role for childhood place experience in the
development 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 undertook
a semi-structured interview. Participants in the study were selected
on the basis of having previously expressed adult place attachment
sentiments likely to indicate the presence of long-term affective
bonds. This approach reflects the phenomenological method of
choosing ‘the best group of subjects available in our culture’ (Van
Kaam cit Crotty, 1996) to articulate the phenomenon being
researched. Participants were all middle aged (early forties to mid
sixties). In recognition of Riley’s (1992) emphasis on the concept of
readily accessible ‘ordinary’ places, and of the importance of
16 P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22
natural environments to children’s development (Striniste &
Moore, 1989), and which abound in objects and processes which
elicit human fascination (Kaplan, 1995), participants were also
selected on the basis of having grown up in locales where they had
everyday access to natural environments either on suburban
fringes (4), or rural areas (3).
The interviews were divided into three sections. In the first
section, participants were asked open questions about their places
and families of origin in order to position participants biographi-
cally and geographically. These questions drew on exclusively on
explicit 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 similarity
with the psychoanalytic approach of ‘bringing unconscious material
to consciousness’ (Frosh, 2002, p. 16), in order to arrive at the
subjectively 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 here
differed somewhat from psychoanalysis in that the interviews were
intended to reveal unconscious internal working models of place
relationships rather than social relationships. To this end, questions
focused on place memories and participants were encouraged to
describe any involuntary place memories (Game, 2001) and asso-
ciations that came to mind, as these are likely to reflect unconscious
processes (Freud, 1976; Frosh, 2002). At the start of this part of the
interviews participants were administered a passive relaxation
exercise (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 associated
with childhood environments (Bachelard, 1969). Participants were
also encouraged to enter into the ‘felt quality’ of memories, in order
to highlight the subjective emotional and sensory qualities of
childhood place memories and minimise analytic cognitive
processes. Questions from this section included.
Can you describe that place [you are remembering], how it
looked, 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 to
reflect on the meaning of their memories from an adult perspective,
particularly as to how they understood the relationship between
their childhood experiences of place and adult identity.
How do you think the experience of growing up in that place has
shaped who you are now?
Can you tell me what is it like for you as an adult to remember
your childhood experience of where you grew up?
These questions were intended to explore cognitive meanings
that participants attributed to their childhood place memories.
Data interpretation drew on phenomenologist, Giorgi’s method of
data analysis (Giorgi cit Von Eckartsberg, 1998) in which interviews
were broken up into numerous ‘meaning units’, short sequences of
uniform 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. Major
themes, those with the highest aggregates of meaning units, were
interpreted 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 place
attachment (Fig. 1) were identified.
8. Results
The seven interviews yielded seven highly particular accounts of
childhood place experience. In each interview, childhood place is
inextricably interwoven into broader biographical narrative. Indi-
vidual family members, family structure and culture, as well as the
wider culture, and place itself, all interact to create a unique set of
conditions within which a child experiences place. Adult place
attachment cannot be understood without reference this broader
biographical frame, and a brief biography of each participant as
revealed in the interviews is included to contextualise exerts cited.
Phillip grew up in suburban Sydney with access to extensive
open spaces of farm, bush, park and industrial land along the upper
reaches of Sydney Harbour. In his early twenties he spent some
years in Europe until he felt compelled to return home after
encountering the unique smell of the Sydney flora at Kew Botanic
Gardens. He still lives in his childhood home. Bluey grew up on
a small family farm of pasture and woodlands outside of Mel-
bourne. This property became a refuge from a school life where he
was unhappy and struggled academically. He lived on the property
until it was sold in his early twenties. He now lives in a suburb
25 km from the farm, which still has an important place in his
dream-life.
Annie grew up on a large sheep grazing property in New South
Wales. At age 12 much of the property was excised from her fam-
ily’s ownership and she was sent to boarding school. After school
she went to college, and lived in Europe for several years before
returning to care for her father. She now lives on another property
20 km from her childhood farm. Mick grew up on the outskirts of
Christchurch, New Zealand where he had access to the Port Hills,
a large grassy volcano remnant. When he was 11 his younger
brother died in an accident as they played, and Mick became very
socially withdrawn through his adolescence. As a young man he left
New Zealand and now lives in Melbourne.
Jim grew up on an orchard outside Adelaide. He left the family
farm to attend boarding school in adolescence. He went on to
university and a successful academic career in USA, but abandoned
this and returned to Australia to work as a farmer and environ-
mental consultant. He now lives in coastal bushland 1200 km from
his childhood farm. Neal grew up in a suburb of Sydney with access
to large tracts of forested parkland. His account of childhood local
neighbourhood was extremely limited, and focused instead on of
holiday places away from home, and his bedroom. He now lives in
the very urban environment of inner Sydney. Jane grew up in
Canberra when it was a very small city with extensive open spaces.
At age 8 her family spent a year in England, and she experienced
clinical depression, missing her older brother, her dog and the clear
blue skies and trees of Canberra. When she returned her brother
had 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 inner
Melbourne.
8.1. Adult emotional connection to place
Participants estimated that most place memories described in
the interview date from between the ages of eight and thirteen,
with none dating from earlier than five. They expressed two
broadly different degrees of emotional connection within the
interviews. Annie, Jane, Bluey, Phillip and Mick reported moments
during the interview of intensely reliving childhood memories, to
the point where the present-day context was experienced as less
vivid, less real than the remembered experience. Such memories
were often involuntary. Jane: [That memory] came into my mind
unbidden. I was intending to talk about other places, but this image
was just there, too strong to ignore. These memories appeared in the
 P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22
form of a static image rather than a narrative structure, although in
most cases participants soon added a narrative context. Present day
surroundings faded to background when feeling states associated
with these images were experienced as being intensely relived in
the present rather than being recalled. Recounted in the present
tense, these memories lacked a subjective sense of remembrance.
Although these experiences during the interview were relatively
brief they were very intense and participants attributed great
significance to them. Jane: I’ve always had those memories, but not
with so much feeling. It’s like they’re in full colour rather than black
and white.
This subjective emotional intensity was also conveyed in non-
verbal expressions such as gesture, facial expression, and vocal
tone. These moments of deep immersion in childhood memory
were characterised by enormous intersubjective power. Sensory
impressions were described with great clarity and detail giving
these memories a vitality that was absent from other parts of the
interview when a more mundane adult cognitive sensibility
predominated, and memories were described as distant pictures
viewed from the outside rather than being relived from within.
Participants who experienced these moments of deep immersion
in childhood emotional states also reported strong adult place
attachments. Jane, Bluey, Phillip and Mick reported that as adults
they still experienced a strong sense of attachment to their
childhood places. Annie said that she recalled having a strong
emotional bond to her family farm as a child, but she no longer
felt this way. She did however report a very strong adult
attachment to her current home, a similar landscape to that of
her childhood.
Although they were known to have previously expressed
sentiments of adult place attachment, both Neal and Jim reported
little sense of emotional connection with their childhood place
experience. Their generally flat non-verbal expression, and
a marked lack of sensory detail in their descriptions of childhood
place added weight to these self reports. Neal said that he had
never felt a strong place attachment his childhood neighbour-
hood places, and in his interview he spoke only of special distant
places where holidays were spent. Neal: I wish I could recall more
of the detail of it.I don’t feel great attachment to [childhood pla-
ces]. Jim did report a sense of place attachment. However, when
questioned further he could articulate little sensory or emotional
detail to give substance to his attachment to either childhood or
adult place.
8.2. Common themes of childhood place remembrance
These reported differences in the intensity of emotional
engagement with memories of childhood place offered one
dimension in which narratives could be differentiated. Through the
process of thematic analysis the following themes emerged from
the adult remembrances of childhood place experience. Excerpts
from the interviews cited typify the thematic expressions of
a number of participants.
8.2.1. Love
Annie: I was intensely engaged in the love I had for that farm. [It
was] really intense as a child. All respondents except Neal reported
a love of childhood place. Five participants who still felt this love
strongly, also described a reciprocal sense of having felt loved and
nurtured or nourished by their childhood place, and of having
derived 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.
17
8.2.2. Grief
The most intense expressions of emotion connected with
memories of childhood place were those of grief. Annie: [Losing the
family farm] was like losing a limb. You know, I mean something vital
had gone. With the exception of Annie, this grief was still keenly felt
in adulthood. Mick and Jane experienced loss of childhood place
through migration, while Phillip expressed a deep sense of grief
over changes he has witnessed to his childhood place where he still
lives. For Mick, Annie and Jane this place-related grief was inter-
woven with childhood losses associated with family. Bluey and
Mick also reported experiencing feelings of intense emotional
distress being soothed by time spent in childhood place. Neal and
Jim denied any sense of grief associated with absence from their
childhood places.
8.2.3. Pleasure
The emotion most frequently expressed throughout all the
interviews was that of pleasure/delight. Non-verbal expressions
indicated that as they remembered during the interview, respon-
dents frequently re-experienced feelings of pleasure associated
with various childhood place experiences. Participants described
several different types of pleasure. PLAY: All participants enjoyed
recounting memories of play-in-place. Jim: We made a racetrack in
there no one knew about. And it was curves, and rises and jumps and
stuff. And we would go and race bikes in there. I haven’t thought
about 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 just
absolutely love it. It just fills me with the most buoyant sense of joy, like
I could just leap into the air. Participants expressed delight in
remembered childhood sensory experience of place, and stated
they were re-experiencing the original feelings as they spoke.
These memories were often multisensory. Mick: The smells would be
a mixture of sheep shit, pine, um a certain um crispness, crispness in
the smells, and the sound is the wind in the tussocks. MASTERY: All
respondents reported childhood feelings of pleasure associated
with a growing sense of agency, skill and achievement in the
material world. Mick: The physical world is where I had most of my
success and achievement as a kid, because I certainly had none
academically and certainly very limited socially. ADVENTURE: Most
respondents reported a delightful sense of adventure associated
with exploration, imaginative play, risk and manageable feelings of
anxiety. Phillip: You could be anywhere in the world, you could
imagine yourself a pirate or you could play war games or any
adventurous sense of a story could be easily conjured up from these
places 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 sense
of movement through space, you know the emptiness, the wind, and
the freedom of being on a horse that was cantering along. You know
that’s the overwhelming memory of place that came back to me. just
a great feeling. In the absence of major trauma, childhood experi-
ence of place appears to be inherently pleasurable. The process of
remembering childhood place was also described as enjoyable by
most participants, even where feelings of loss and grief were
experienced.
8.2.4. Security
Mick: Being on the vine and snuggled into it, and feeling very
contained and secure and comfy in it. Most respondents expressed
a positively affected sense of security associated with childhood
place. This recalled sense of security-in-place appears to have
emerged from a strong sense of childhood familiarity with place
described by six of the seven respondents. Mick: This tussock’s
familiar, the sounds are familiar, the bird-life’s familiar, the tracks are
18 P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22
familiar, all the different brows, the contours and textures are familiar.
Implied here is a repeated, goal-less criss-crossing of childhood
place, which Bluey named wandering, and which gave rise to this
sense of familiarity. In marked contrast to other respondents, Neal’s
accounts of childhood places were frequently coloured by feelings
of anxiety and lack of security. His account also differed in that it
contained no sense of familiarity with childhood place or any
recollections of exploration and play-in-place independent of adult
supervision. The potential for the sense of place-security to be
illusory was powerfully brought home to Mick when his brother
was killed as a result of play-in-place. Along with the sense of
personal security emerging from familiarity, the rapid pace of the
child’s developmental change, vis-a-vis the usually slow pace of
change to place, gave rise to a sense that childhood place itself is
secure, permanent; a trust that place was always just out the
backdoor (Phillip). The sense that place itself is secure could also be
illusory as Annie found out when much of the family farm was lost.
You know, . something vital had gone.
8.2.5. Identity
Annie, Jane, Bluey, Phillip and Mick all attributed great impor-
tance to the developmental influence of childhood place, stating
that it helped form and still contributes to their adult identity.
Mick: Somehow those hills are connected to my soul.you know just
as I began to think about it a lot more, um [I realise] how bloody
important it was. This is home. This is what shaped me. It was
shaping my identity. It was shaping who I was, who I am. This
retrospective attribution of importance to the developmental
influence of childhood place was very different from participants’
descriptions of their childhood attitude to place. These had a naı̈ve,
taken-for-granted quality, with place being a lot of fun or just out the
back door. Unlike the participants who reported a strong emotional
connection to childhood place, both Neal and Jim denied that their
childhood place experiences made any significant contribution to
their adult identity.
8.3. The arousal-interaction-pleasure model
The themes of adult recollections of childhood place experience
are captured in relatively succinct excerpts from participants
accounts. However, the more complex pattern of child interaction
with place depicted in the upper arc of Fig. 1 is only revealed in
more extensive excerpts. The following passage from Bluey’s
account captures his place-induced excitement, his playful behav-
ioural response, and a strong positive affect associated with the
sense of mastery resulting from that behaviour. [There] was a long
hill down to the house. I’d walk it and I’d [feel like] running, and I’d um
get a real momentum up. And I’d start to leap. And that each time I’d
leave the ground, I’d pick a point on the grass ahead of me to land, and
each leap I’d extend it more and more and the hill got steeper and
steeper, and by the point of the last bit of that hill I would just fly. I
would just be having such a momentum going, and I’d pick a point that
was way beyond what I could possibly reach. But I would always reach
it, and I’d feel like I’d be in the air, and I’d be like I’ve still got another
two 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 the
feeling was] just fantastic, just fantastic. I was um. (smiles). I’d just
fly, literally fly and I would be doing something that I couldn’t do, but I
was doing it.
Other passages capture not only the pattern of arousal – play/
exploration – pleasure, but also link aspects of adult identity to this
formative pattern. Mick reported deriving a great sense of
achievement from ascending the 1000 metre high hills of his
childhood. He attributed his high levels of motivation characteristic
of 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’s
a long way up’. And away you’d go, put your head down and you’d
sweat 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 presented
me with so many opportunities to engage in enough challenge that I
felt 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 of
my success and achievement as a kid, because I certainly had none
academically and very limited socially.
Bluey attributes his adult aesthetic sensibility to a childhood
fascination with and pleasure in the material form of place. I’d just
sort of wander, and there’d be points where I’d be literally observing
every rock or old bit of car body, or anything that was intriguing me.
Rocks, I just loved rocks, I was always fascinated by rocks.That
waterfall had good rocks on it. Mossy rocks.I’d feel them. And there’d
be times of just wonder, you know like looking. I guess I was like I am
now 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, I
guess. There were definitely little pockets on the property that I liked
more than the others. And I’d just. explore the rocks around you
know, literally, in some areas, I’d know every rock.. I was very aware
of the environment. And I liked it, so that made me feel good to be
around that.
9. Discussion
While noting some variation in the place attachments reported
by participants, this study found enough similarities in the majority
of 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. Attachment
theorists describe an interactional pattern in which the infant’s
distress (arousal) is soothed by the attachment figure’s care-giving
behaviours, and which culminates in a positively affected sense of
mutual connectedness. Frequent repetition of this sequence stim-
ulates and consolidates the infant’s internal developmental
processes, and gives rise to an unconscious internal working model
of 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 of
arousal-interaction-pleasure, shown in the upper arc of Fig. 1
characterises childhood place experience. Extended excerpts from
interviews cited in 8.3 reflect this pattern of child-environment
interaction as well the developmental influence of childhood place
experience on adult identity. These findings support the proposi-
tion that repeated enactments of the arousal-interaction-pleasure
pattern 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 place
attachment.
Five participants who reported strong place attachment senti-
ments also described involuntary place memories in the form of
vivid re-experiencing during the interview of emotional states and
sensory perceptions associated with childhood place experiences.
These moments when childhood emotional states were re-lived
during interviews in full colour rather than black and white
demonstrated characteristics that Siegel (1999) attributes to
implicit memory. The absence of narrative structure and subjective
sense of recollection (reflected in use of the present tense in the
interviews) suggest that such memories are part of implicit
memory. As such, these potent, affect-laden images of childhood
place provide further support for the presence of internal working
models of childhood place experience. The two participants who
 P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22
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 of
childhood place.
Siegel (1999) also suggests that unconscious internal working
models are reflected in the themes of explicit autobiographical
memory. This study argues that themes emerging from partici-
pants’ remembrances of childhood place experience reflect internal
working models of childhood place experience and something of
the processes by which they arise. The study found the five themes
emerging through phenomenological reduction and these appear
to support the proposed arousal-interaction-pleasure develop-
mental model of place attachment.
The experience of pleasure as a result of childhood interactions
with the environment is central to this developmental model of
place attachment. The presence of positive affect resulting from
childhood interactions with place is clearly demonstrated by the
emergence of pleasure as the most prominent theme of the inter-
views. It just fills me with the most buoyant sense of joy. That was
a lot of fun. Participants associated pleasure with the activities of
place-exploration, place-play and sensory perception, as well as
with the subjective senses of mastery, freedom and adventure. The
five participants who provided highly detailed recall of positively
affected experiences of childhood place, also reported a strong
long-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 further
supported by the emergence of identity as a prominent theme of
the 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 to
the 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 attachment
to their childhood place experience, and expressed the belief that
their childhood place experiences also contributed to their
psychological development and adult identity. In extended
excerpts (Section 8.3), Bluey and Mick explicitly attribute the
development of specific aspects of adult personality to childhood
place experience. Conversely participants with very limited child-
hood place memories, Neal and Jim, stated they did not believe that
childhood place experiences had contributed to their adult identity.
The emergence of this link between childhood place experience
and adult identity as a prominent theme, along with some partic-
ipants’ reflective awareness of that link, further supports the
developmental model offered here (Fig. 1). In a similar finding
Korpela and Hartig (1996) concluded that experiences of positive
affect in child-environment interactions contribute to identity
consolidation (developmental) processes.
Five participants used the word ‘love’ (of place), accompanied by
congruent non-verbal communications. This was understood as
indicating a long-term affective bond to place (place attachment).
Four of these participants also reported experiencing strong grief
associated with loss of childhood place, providing further support
from the interviews for the presence of a strong affective attach-
ment to place. The prominence of these two themes in adult
remembrances of childhood place experience, and participants’
assertion that their love of place arose out of their childhood place
experience, supports the proposal that an affective bond to place
(place attachment) emerges through childhood place experience.
Conversely Jim, whose memories of childhood place experience
contained very limited affect or sensory detail, expressed only
superficial place attachment. Neal whose place memories were
tinged with anxiety rather than pleasure denied any attachment to
19
his place of origin. Neither reported any deep immersion in child-
hood experience suggestive of implicit memory during their
interviews. Although both reported they experienced some place
attachment as adults, their descriptions lacked noticeable
congruent non-verbal expressions that would have given them
greater substance. Also, neither Jim nor Neal reported any sense of
grief associated with separation from childhood place. The lack of
detailed childhood place memories and strong place attachment
sentiments from the accounts of Neal and Jim suggest the absence
of 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 place
attachment. This finding accords with Chawla’s (1992) identification
of a qualitative spread of different types of adult place attachments.
While it is possible that Neal and Jim’s accounts reflect a failure of the
interview procedure to evoke implicit memory, the results are
consistent with the explanation that their childhood place experi-
ences were not generalised into robust internal working models with
strong subjective feelings of place attachment. This finding does not
undermine the proposed model, but suggests that where childhood
place experience is not consolidated into an internal working model,
place attachment is weak. While Neal’s experience of childhood place
anxiety appears to have undermined the development of a robust
place attachment, the reasons why Jim’s childhood place experiences
did not consolidate into a strong place attachment remain unclear.
Attachment theory uses a continuum of anxiety-security to
evaluate the quality of attachment (Bowlby, 1974). The attachment
figure’s proximity and emotional attunement engenders feelings of
security and wellbeing. Threats to security give rise to anxiety in
the short term and attachment disorders if sustained. Findings of
this study suggest that for the majority of participants, a sense of
security of place was associated with feelings of wellbeing, a sense
of the soul’s being nurtured, and disruptions to place attachment
were associated with strong feelings of grief and anxiety, similar to
those observed in young children in response to separation from
attachment figures (Bowlby, 1980). The developmental model of
place attachment proposed here requires frequent re-enactment of
the arousal-interaction-pleasure pattern in order that childhood
place experience be generalised and internalised into a strong
internal working model of place. The security/familiarity theme
provides support for this aspect of the proposed model. The sense
of familiarity and security reported by participants expressing
strong place attachment feelings are unlikely to have emerged
without those participants undertaking frequent interactions with
the physical environment in childhood.
Attachment theory argues that by settling distress through care-
giving and soothing behaviours, the attachment figure acts as an
external emotional regulator until the infant can internalise this
function for himself (Trevarthen, 1993; Schore, 1994). The restor-
ative (soothing) qualities of natural environments (Altman &
Wohlwill, 1983; Kaplan, 1995; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989) are here
understood as being somewhat analogous to the soothing effect of
human care-giving. Korpela (1989) took this analogy further,
finding that place functions as external regulator for emotional
states. Likewise, several participants in this study described using
childhood place to regulate emotional distress. Bluey was very clear
that he used his time wandering the farm each weekend to recover
from his negative experience of school and create a sense of calm
self belief. Similarly, in a study of autobiographical writing, Chawla
(1992) found that the most common reported benefit of fondly
remembered childhood places was ‘that they form an internal
centre of stability and calm’ in adulthood.
Alongside these parallels between human attachment and place
attachment, there are some important differences. Human attach-
ment is universal – a fundamental requirement of human
20 P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22
development. Like this study, Chawla (1986) found that place
attachment is not universal, or at least there appears to be a much
greater range in its quality and perceived importance than there is
for human attachment. The need she identified for place theorists
to define the different types of place attachment still stands
unaddressed. Also, attachment theorists see the first three years of
life as most important in the attachment relationship, as this is
when brain development is greatest (Siegel, 1999). Participants in
this study estimated that most of the place memories described in
the interview date from between the ages of 8 and 13, with none
dating from an age younger than five. Place attachment emerges at
a later age than human attachment (Sobel, 1990). However, there is
nothing in the study to suggest that the circular interactional
dynamic depicted in Fig. 1 is not operational from a much earlier
age, but that the child’s sense of place attachment only emerges
long after the strong emotional attachment to the attachment
figure.
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 biological
substrate allows for the broad intersubjective, deeply attuned
relationship necessary for the psychobiological development of the
infant. The sophisticated intersubjective attunement underpinning
human attachment has no obvious parallel in place attachment.
Instead of a clearly identifiable, deeply attuned figure, place
attachment is more usefully conceptualised in terms of an attach-
ment field. In attachment theory, this field is seen as arousing the
young child’s fascination, excitement and anxiety – the antithesis of
the attachment figure who soothes, settles and regulates emotional
arousal (Marvin et al., 2004). Yet, despite this absence of an iden-
tified, attuned figure, four of the participants reported a subjective
sense 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 and
active presence supporting psychological development and
wellbeing.
In the most thorough exploration to date of the links between
place attachment and human attachment, Giuliani (2003) looks to
Ainsworth’s definition of an affectional bond to compare the two.
Drawing on Ainsworth’s criteria of longevity, uniqueness of the
attachment figure, and the experience of security and pleasure in
proximity and distress on separation, Giuliani finds that on balance,
the differences between place attachment and human attachment
outweigh the similarities. However, the model of place attachment
development supported by the majority of the accounts in this
study suggests important similarities between the two forms of
attachment. Four of the participants in this study report place
attachment to be as long lasting and as particular as human
attachment. Five participants reported the experience of security
and pleasure in proximity and distress on separation from place.
Regarding Ainsworth’s criterion of uniqueness, four participants
expressed stronger feelings for remembered childhood places than
current adult place. The picture of place attachment emerging from
this study is that, while feelings of pleasure and security arising
from proximity to, and distress on separation from, place may be
more subtle and take longer to register than similar feelings asso-
ciated with human attachment figures, such feelings are definitely
a part of the experience of place attachment. Overall, while
acknowledging differences between the two forms of attachment,
this study finds important similarities in the childhood experience
at the core of both human attachment and place attachment.
However, the study is limited in its scope. It sketches out a basic
theoretical model of the development of place attachment from
childhood experience of place. The retrospective, subjective
accounts of the interviews lend support to that model. However,
this can only be considered preliminary support, and there is need
for stronger evidence. An obvious limitation of the study is the very
small 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 complimentary
epistemological approaches that Stern argued were necessary for
a holistic picture of child development. Empirical observations of
children-in-place have not been undertaken. Instead the theoret-
ical model draws on observational studies previously described in
the literature. However, in the light of the major developments in
attachment theory that have occurred since, there is need for an
updating of Hart (1979) and Moore’s (1986) rich observational
studies of children’s engagement with place.
Also this study has limited its focus to the child’s relationship
with the physical environment. The model proposed here has not
addressed social constructivist notions of place. This is a reflection
of the limited scope of the study rather than an implicit denial of
the role of culture in place attachment. The model proposed here is
compatible with Moore’s (1986) modification to Bronfenbrenner’s
ecological model of child development, which provides an over-
arching theoretical modal that incorporates both place and cultural
influences on child development. A promising area for future
research is the longitudinal perspective of the interplay of these
two influences over the course of human developmental.
A further challenge to the inferences drawn from this study is
the well-recognised unreliability of adult recollections of childhood
events. This study argues that while explicit memory of childhood
events is unreliable, the subjective emotional states experienced
during deep remembrance and the five emergent themes are
associated with unconscious internal working models. These
implicit memory generalisations of repeated childhood experiences
of place are more robust than the reconstructed recollections of
explicit memory.
Two participants in this study reported an adult place attach-
ment that did not appear to have developed from childhood
experience, or at least not according to the developmental model
provided here. This finding suggests the possibility of at least one
alternative to the model offered here. In spite of Chawla’s (1986)
identification of different types of place attachment, there is yet no
equivalent of attachment theory’s four experimentally validated
types of attachment (Goldberg, 2000), and certainly no mapping of
the different processes that give rise to the various forms of place
attachment. Ultimately however, much of the evidence and theo-
retical detail are most likely to emerge through longitudinal studies
and these are sadly lacking (Hay, 1998). Hopefully this study can
provide some impetus towards such work.
This study elicited involuntary childhood place memories with
the characteristics of implicit memory from those participants
reporting a strong adult place attachment. The numerous expres-
sions of remembered place-pleasure support the proposition that
outdoor environments elicit place-exploration and place-play
behaviours in children which give rise to frequent positive affect
states. The frequent repetition of this child-environment trans-
actional pattern (Fig. 1) is implied in the security and familiarity
associated with childhood place by these same participants. Such
repetition allows for the generalisation of this pattern into an
internal working model of the relationship with childhood place
which manifests subjectively as long-term positively affected bond
to place. The implicit memory characteristics of the most vivid place
memories reflect the presence of internal working models of
childhood place experience. Reports by these same participants of
the use of childhood place to regulate emotional distress, of a posi-
tively affected childhood sense of place-security, and of intense grief
on separation from place, all suggest strong parallels to the
 P. Morgan / Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 (2010) 11–22
developmental role of the attachment relationship. These parallels
along with a belief expressed by the same group of participants that
childhood place experience has shaped their adult identity supports
the argument for a developmental role for childhood place experi-
ence. The study also details the absence of such reports from
participants who described a weak adult place attachment. These
results combine to provide preliminary support for the develop-
mental model of place attachment offered and the proposition that
the process by which place attachment develops has strong simi-
larities to that by which human attachment develops.
The parallels between human attachment and place attachment
appear to be significant enough to be recognised by several
participants who describe a subjective sense of being shaped or
‘parented’ by place. Similarly, the wide use of the term ‘Mother
Earth’ signifies a broader cultural recognition of close parallels
between 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 and
affect that includes ‘persons, places and even animals and physical
objects’. By extending the dialogue between place theory and
attachment theory, this study has begun to address the absence of
a developmental theory of place attachment as well as attachment
theory’s lack of attention to place as an interactive presence
contributing to human developmental processes. In identifying
significant parallels between children’s experience of place and the
human attachment relationship, particularly the way both
phenomena stimulate human development, give rise to long-term
affective bonds and contribute to adult identity, this study is a step
towards an integrated developmental theory.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to John Cameron for his generous and
informed comments on this research.
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