Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology © 2013 American Psychological Association

2014, Vol. 34, No. 2, 101–115 1068-8471/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0033040

On Our Everyday Being: Heidegger and Attachment Theory

Bryan T. Reuther
Nova Southeastern University

Each of us acquires a sense of everyday being implicitly through our engagement with
the social milieu. Understanding this being from the usual individualistic psychological
perspective suggests it originates from a subjective, internal private world. This
position, descended from Cartesian dualism, bifurcates human experience, rendering an
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

isolated subject and a decontextualized external world. Martin Heidegger rejected this
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idea and contended that our sense of being springs from a more basic and primordial
engagement with the social world as a meaningful totality of being-in-the-world.
However, he did not explain how human beings develop this everyday being. Attach-
ment theory, espoused by John Bowlby, positions human beings from birth with the
innate ability to form close relationships with others, which serve critical roles in early
development and throughout the life span. This article integrates Heidegger’s social
ontology with Bowlby’s attachment theory to establish a nondualistic theoretical
grounding for human relational development, and provides the beginnings of an
existentially based developmental ontology of human being that fits within the current
movement of post-Cartesian thought.

Keywords: Heidegger, Bowlby, being-in-the-world, attachment theory, human development

We are all born into a social world of human
construction. At some point during our devel-
opment, we literally discover ourselves as ac-
tive members of human sociocultural groups
already engaging in certain ways of interacting
with others, interpreting situations, and making
sense of experiences. In our experience of ev-
eryday life as members of the social milieu, we
come to absorb, rather implicitly, ways to feel
and behave in certain contexts. This process
subsequently brings into focus our sense of our
potentials and limitations within our social con-
text, and most centrally how things are mean-
ingful— essentially what can be considered our
way of being. Given this, what is the best way
This article was published Online First July 29, 2013.
Many thanks to Steve Gold, Geoff Pfeiffer, and Eugene
May for the many conversations and endless support, which
helped me develop the ideas in this article. I also thank three
anonymous reviewers, whose helpful comments and sug-
gestions on previous drafts undoubtedly improved this arti-
cle. This article is a much expanded version of a poster
presented at the 120th Annual American Psychological As-
sociation Convention in Orlando, Florida, in August 2012.
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-
dressed to Bryan T. Reuther, Center for Psychological Stud-
ies, Nova Southeastern University, 3301 College Avenue,
Davie, FL 33314. E-mail: btreuther@gmail.com
101
of understanding this being? Where does it orig-
inate and how does it develop? If we start from
an individualistic psychological perspective,
this framework will suggest that our everyday
being originates from a subjective, internal
private world. This position, descended from
Cartesian dualism, bifurcates human experi-
ence, rendering an isolated subject and a de-
contextualized external world. While on a
certain reflective level, we can surely per-
ceive objects and other people in the world as
seemingly “subjective” entities to fulfill the
dichotomy, parting off experience in such a
way, as Rollo May (1983/1994) suggested,
loses the richness of the living, existing hu-
man being’s relationship to and engagement
in the world. Consequently, this dualistic po-
sition cannot be the fundamental starting
place if we are to understand human being,
subsequently calling for an understanding that
collapses this duality in pursuit of the depth
and robustness of being grounded in human
existence.
A steward of this line of thought, the philos-
opher Martin Heidegger (1927/1962) rejected
the idea of everyday being as derived from a
privatized, internal realm of subjectivity.
Heidegger repositioned the usual assumptions
 102 REUTHER
of a dualistic starting place as a derivative
mode, one that springs from a more basic, pri-
mordial, and practical engagement with the
world as a meaningful totality—what he called
“being-in-the-world.” This is a theoretical move
with ontological significance that depicts a hu-
man being, or Dasein, before any internal sub-
jective mind and external objective world is
abstracted. He contextualized human existence
through embedded, mutually constitutive activ-
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ity that is given through immersion in the so-
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ciocultural practices. Within his conception of
being-in-the-world, Heidegger forwarded a
unique view of emotional life that is existen-
tially grounded in Befindlichkeit,1 which is ex-
perienced as “moods.” For Heidegger, moods
are inundated with meanings and are responsi-
ble for attuning us to our being-in-the-world.
In situating human beings as being-in-the-
world, Heidegger contended that we take up our
everyday being via our absorptive immersion in
the sociocultural milieu. This occurs rather im-
plicitly through our practical activity with oth-
ers, grounded in another existential structure,
designated as Verfallen, or falling. In other
words, through our absorption, we “fall” into
certain ways of being-in-the-world that are al-
ready always possibilities available to us given
by our sociocultural times and situation. He
offered a rich ontological backdrop for the irre-
ducibility and context specificity of human so-
cial life and the constitution of being. However,
he did not explain how human beings, at least
developmentally, come to this everyday being.
The psychoanalyst John Bowlby’s (1969/
1982) attachment theory suggests that relation-
ships, particularly those involving emotional
and affective engagements with primary care-
givers, have an enormous impact on how a
person develops perceptions and understand-
ings of themselves, others, and the world. More
specifically, attachment theory positions human
beings from birth with the innate ability to form
close relationships with other human beings.
These ongoing “attachment relationships,” ac-
cording to Bowlby, are the hub around which a
person’s life revolves and, in many ways, pro-
vide structures for engendering a sense of how
a human being behaves in and experiences a
particular interpersonal or social situations.
Given the aforementioned positions, can the
relationally based developmental perspective of
attachment theory fit within Heidegger’s social
ontology to help elucidate how we arrive at a
sense of everyday being?
Given that Heidegger positioned others as the
primary source of social possibilities, to under-
stand a person’s being-in-the-world, this article
will demonstrate how the affectively laden
activity in attachment relationships fit within
Heideggerian thought. Moreover, using
Heidegger’s conception of mood, this article
will also establish how the inherent emotional
and affective value held in these early attach-
ment relationships help attune us to the world,
set the tone for future experiences, and gener-
ally provide a source of sense of our everyday
being. Relevant supportive research in develop-
mental psychology and psychoanalysis will also
be woven into this analysis. The main goal of
this article is to evince the relevancy and appro-
priateness of Heidegger’s work, especially his
unique social ontology and collapsing of Carte-
sian-based dualities, as a philosophical and the-
oretical grounding for developmental and rela-
tional psychological theory. It will also seek to
provide the beginnings of a developmental ap-
proach to Heidegger’s philosophy of Dasein
and being-in-the-world, with the intent of work-
ing toward an existentially based developmental
ontology, which may have conceptual and prac-
tical implications on how we view human
being. The following sections introduce
Heidegger’s philosophical ideas and Bowlby’s
psychologically based attachment theory.
Heidegger’s Thought
In Being and Time, Heidegger introduced the
nature of Dasein and the structure of being-in-
the-world. The introduction of these terms was
intended to deliver a fresh perspective for the
analysis of the human being. Dasein, which
literally translates as “being-there,” is essen-
tially Heidegger’s (1927/1962) name for all of
us as human beings: “Dasein is not only close to
us— even that which is closest: we are it, each
of us, we ourselves” (p. 36). He continued,
“Dasein is an entity which in each case I am
myself” (p. 78). As Hubert Dreyfus (1991)
stated, Dasein “can refer to a way of being that
is characteristic of all people or to a specific
1
Befindlichkeit is a complex Heideggerian term that will
be defined and addressed later in this article.
 ON OUR EVERYDAY BEING
person—a human being” (p. 14). Dasein, how-
ever, is not to be understood as a subject with a
consciousness; instead, it is assigned as the on-
tological character of human beings as contex-
tualized and embedded in the world with others,
as a part of the irreducible totality of existence.
Being-in-the-world is an ontological struc-
ture, which supplies the grounding for Dasein’s
existential character. Dasein is essentially be-
ing-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world is the
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most basic, primordial structure, which, as
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Heidegger (1927/1962) wrote, “stands for a uni-
tary phenomenon” and “must be seen as a
whole” (p. 78). In this way, he closed the onto-
logical gap between dualistic conceptions of
subject/object, inner/outer, and individual/
world, with the implication that one must be
understood in context of the other as a process-
oriented, meaning embedded whole. Heidegger
continued by saying that “’[b]eing-in’ is thus
the formal existential expression for the being
of Dasein, which has being-in-the-world as its
existential state” (p. 80). Given this, being-in
the world is not to be understood spatially as
liquid is in a cup, but rather to refer to each of
our existences as a relational primacy of prere-
flective, practical action with the world. We
simply go about our everyday lives, doing what
we do without any indication of a mind relating
to others and the world. Primordially, we are a
part of the overall process of each social event.
Along with this, Heidegger assigned Dasein as
being-in-the-world as Lichtung, which refers to
both a light and a clearing (as in a clearing in
the forest). Dasein is the type of being that is
open to and illuminates the world, allowing the
world to be revealed and be known. For exam-
ple, consider the world as a dark room and the
human being, as Dasein, as a sort of brightness
or illumination. As the human being moves
through the darkness, the surrounding area be-
comes illuminated or cleared, revealing this
openness to the possibilities of a human world.
Simultaneously, Dasein will always be con-
stricted or “darkened” to certain other possibil-
ities of the world. In all, Dasein will always be
in a struggle with simultaneous openness and
constrictiveness to possibilities in its world dis-
closure.
Moreover, Heidegger (1927/1962) situated
“the world of Dasein is a with-world (Mitwelt).
Being-in is being-with others” (p. 155). Expe-
riencing other people in everyday life as being-
103
with others presupposes an existential structure
of being-with. Our mere existence places us in a
position to always be with others, even when
alone, as we are always experiencing a human
world. Dasein’s ontological being-with and on-
tic2 being-with others are central features of
being-in-the-world. It is through our practical
engagements with others that we take up these
humanly possibilities according to context.
Given the primacy of our engagement with oth-
ers in a social world, Heidegger was clear on
presenting a source, or the “who,” of everyday
being, which is the society and culture in which
we exist.
The “who” of everydayness, constitutes what
Heidegger called das Man, or the they.
Heidegger (1927/1962) indicated that “[t]he
‘they’ has its own ways to be. . .that concerns
itself as such with averageness, which is the
existential character of the ‘they’” (p. 164). He
added that “[t]he self of everyday Dasein is
the ‘they-self’” (p. 167). That is to say, who we
are as a self-identity, as Dasein, is held in the
societies and cultures in which we live. It is
through the existential structure of Verfallen,
translated as falling, that we “fall” into the
world of what the “they” or sociocultural milieu
does in any particular context. He indicated that
this “fallenness into the world means an absorp-
tion in being-with-one-another” (p. 220). Our
falling occurs rather implicitly and prereflec-
tively, and can be understood as a kind of con-
forming. Whether we are aware of it or not, we
all subscribe to different sociocultural entities to
define who we are; these include peer groups,
occupations, religious entities, cultures, and so
on. Each of these entities has their own partic-
ular systems of meaning, modes of interacting,
possibilities, limitations, and ways of being af-
fected by the world. In our everydayness, we
comport ourselves as context-dependent expres-
sions of the being provided by our societies and
cultures. As consequence to this, Heidegger
mentioned that considering the averageness of
the “they,” conforming to these customs, tradi-
2
Heidegger made the distinction between “ontological”
and “ontic” in his analysis. Ontological refers to the nature
of our existence and being, while ontic refers to the way in
which, for example psychologically, we experience our
being. Accordingly, Heidegger (1927/1962) stated “Dasein
is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological” (p. 32,
emphasis in original).
 104 REUTHER
tions, and practices is a “‘leveling down’ of all
possibilities of being” (p. 165).
Within being-in-the-world, Heidegger
assigned Befindlichkeit, which is roughly trans-
lated to affectedness or attunement, as the par-
ticular mode of existence that provides the
possibility of the world as “always already”
mattering in some way. It is one of four exis-
tential structures of being-in-the-world, which
also includes understanding (Verstehen), discur-
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siveness (Rede), and falling (Verfallen). Al-
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though these structures are equiprimordial, in
the revealing of Dasein’s world disclosure, this
analysis will focus mostly on Befindlichkeit as
our primordial affectedness and Verfallen as
falling, because both of these structures are of
particular relevance to the aim of this article.
Befindlichkeit is the existential possibility for a
meaning disclosing world that reveals being-in-
the world as a whole (Heidegger, 1927/1962;
Gendlin, 1988). This structure is ontically ex-
perienced through mood. For Heidegger (1927/
1962), mood “comes from neither ‘outside’ nor
from ‘inside,’ but arises out of being-in-the-
world, as a way of such being” (p. 176). Moods
are, therefore, neither internally derived (sub-
jective) concepts nor ones that are received
wholly from the external (objective). Instead,
they arise from mutually constituted practical
activity with others within certain sociocultural
contexts. Along with moods, the disclosing
modes of Befindlichkeit may also be expressed
experientially as emotions, feelings, and affects
(Boss, 1979/1994; Gendlin, 1988).
According to Heidegger, moods reveal our
inherent thrownness, orientation to the possibil-
ities in a social world, and how things matter.
Thrownness is the fact that we fundamentally
exist in a world and have to be one thing or
another—we are always affected by the world
and we can never be without some relation to it.
Our orientation to possibilities is our orientation
to a social world with potentials that are avail-
able. He held that “by way of having a mood,
Dasein ‘sees’ possibilities” and “in the projec-
tive disclosure of possibilities, it already has a
mood” (Heidegger, 1927/1962, p. 188). This
orientation allows for the discovery of others in
the world and the possibilities therein.3 Finally,
moods reveal how the world matters in a certain
way. They saturate the world with meanings by
unveiling situations as frustrating, anxious,
pleasant, joyful, and so forth. Consequently,
they are not cognitive phenomena, at least at the
primordial level, but rather are the tacitly sensed
and felt total experience that attunes us to the
world. Simply put, moods are always there to
disclose how we are in our everydayness as
being-in-the-world.
Bowlby’s Attachment Theory
Bowlby’s attachment theory is a relationally
based psychological theory grounded in ethnol-
ogy, human development, and evolutionary the-
ory. He contended that, from birth, human
beings form attachment relationships to adult
humans that are in close proximity, typically
ones that have the most contact, such as care-
givers (e.g., parents or parental surrogates).4
Attachment theory positions human infants with
the innate, biologically “programmed” ability to
engage in certain attachment behaviors, such as
clinging, sucking, grasping, and following, as
well as signaling behaviors of crying and smil-
ing (Bowlby, 1969/1982; Bretherton, 1992).
Moreover, adult humans will also have special
ways of responding to infants and children,
which are oftentimes the result of their own
experiences with attachment figures (Bowlby,
1969/1982). From an evolutionary perspective,
attachment-seeking and signaling behaviors op-
erated to ensure the survival of the child due to
the variety of environmental hazards and pred-
ators human ancestors faced. Given the com-
plexities of human social life, intimate bonds
form from the interaction of the infant and care-
giver and provide the foundation for the infant’s
future socioemotional development (Bowlby,
1969/1982, 1988; Thompson, 1993).
3
This is a good example of how Befindlichkeit as affect-
edness is equiprimordial to understanding in the constitution
of everyday being. In this case, the ontically or psycholog-
ically experienced mood discloses how Dasein is in a par-
ticular situation. Dasein’s ability to “see” possibilities rep-
resents having implicit knowledge or “know how” given
their attunement (mood) and, therefore, an understanding of
the situation.
4
It should be noted that, although mothers have histori-
cally been viewed as the primary attachment figure, attach-
ments can include fathers and other human beings to a
greater or lesser extent. Infants and children often form
multiple attachments; however, the primary attachment fig-
ure tends to be the one who spends the most time with the
infant and therefore has the greatest impact on his or her
development.
 ON OUR EVERYDAY BEING
The main goal of attachment systems is to
provide the infant or child with a sense of felt
security; that others can be relied on for protec-
tion and support when needed. Early in human
development, separation from an attachment
figure will often evoke distress, fear, and pro-
test, which are seen as manifestations of what is
called separation anxiety (Bowlby, 1988). The
way in which separation is handled is critical to
the developing human being. If the attachment
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figure consistently attends to the child when
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needed or in distress, the child learns that safety
and security is possible. As a result, the child is
able to handle separation more effectively and
is able to develop adaptive strategies to cope,
such as find it in others (e.g., teachers, intimate
partners). With the establishment of security
through the attachment relationship, infants and
children can explore their environment from
this secure “base” and gain experiences and
move toward autonomy. Moreover, Bowlby
noted that if the child is inconsistently re-
sponded to or rejected outright, insecure attach-
ments can form, impairing the child’s emotional
development and ability to explore the world.
These positions have a profound and long-
standing impact on the development of the per-
son and the way in which the social world is
revealed.
These intimate relational bonds with attach-
ments provide people with models for future
social interactions and interpersonal relation-
ships, which Bowlby (1988) called “internal
working models.” More specifically, internal
working models are a species of cognitive sche-
mata that govern the way a person interprets
oneself, others, and the world that impact social
expectations, socioemotional understandings,
and personality (Thompson, 2008a). Bowlby’s
notion of internal working models—along with
their concomitant content—which are generated
from secure or insecure attachments, greatly
direct experiences and understandings of self
and others (Thompson, 2008b). Earlier experi-
ences, particularly with caregivers, provide an
initial framework, which remains consistent
throughout life, even though it is possible that
later experiences with other attachment figures
can alter and “revise” these “models.” Attach-
ments eventually expand beyond caregivers and
close family members to include peer groups in
adolescence, as well as occupations, intimate
partners, and religious and cultural figures in
105
adulthood. It is important to note that general
attachment behaviors and the formation of inti-
mate relationships are fairly universal; however,
the way in which these behaviors manifest over
time and the forms they take may vary based on
sociocultural practices.
Everyday Being and Attachment Theory
The preceding sections provided a general
overview of both Heidegger’s and Bowlby’s
thought. Before continuing, it should be noted
that implied in Bowlby’s developmental frame-
work are deterministic and linear conceptions of
development, with the most poignant example
being internal working models. Yet, this aspect
of his theory is not necessarily a burden to the
present analysis because the actual phenomena
Bowlby described can be grounded and recast
using Heidegger’s social ontology. As such,
viewing internal working models through a
Heideggerian lens dramatically contextualizes
them while also collapsing their dualistic struc-
ture. The “internal” aspect of the working
model implies something that was internalized
and now resides inside the person—as inside a
type of cognitive container, isolated and closed
off from the world. The allocation of these
models as decontextualized stored “things” is
misleading when understanding their embedded
practical and social function. Even Bowlby
(1988) acknowledged that “the forms they take,
as the evidence strongly suggests, are based on
the child’s real-life experience of day-to-day
interactions with the parents” (pp. 129 –130). In
a person’s everydayness, these patterns are pre-
reflective, active modes of existence that in-
volve an embodied person in a contextual
world, not a static set of rules that exist “inside”
a cognitive container consulted prior to action
or behavior. Furthermore, the relational psycho-
analyst Stephen Mitchell (2000) stated:
We might speculate that the residue of attachment
experiences, both early on and through later life, in-
cludes not simply cognitive working models of the
interpersonal world, but affective states of undifferen-
tiated connection with attachment figures, organized
around both positive affects, like euphoria or soothing
calm, and negative affects, like depression, anxiety, or
terror. (pp. 90 –91)
Therefore, it can be said that different possi-
bilities and interpretations are disclosed through
these emotionally saturated lived relationships,
 106
which illuminate various ways of being to the
developing human being. This perspective cuts
much deeper than the cognitive⫺subjective em-
phasis to more of the primordial affectedness
(Befindlichkeit) of human existence that
Heidegger discussed. At the very basic level,
these relational patterns are out there in-the-
world, residing in the fundamental and indivis-
ible human relational world saturated and con-
textualized through affectivity. Consequently,
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Bowlby’s conception of internal working mod-
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els, with their dualistic underpinnings and cog-
nitive basis, if to be used at all, can only be cast
as abstractions posteriori to the embedded ac-
tivity of being-in-the-world. With this contex-
tual grounding in being-in-the-world, the con-
cept of “internal working models” can be set
aside without losing Bowlby’s core point.
The following sections will further explore
how our fundamental activity within these at-
tachment relationships is situated in the struc-
tures of being-in-the-world and being-with. Us-
ing Heidegger’s conception of Befindlichkeit
(through mood), it will be shown how the lived
experiences of these emotionally laden attach-
ment relationships attune us to the world and
others, structuring our existence, and revealing
it in certain meaningful ways. Moreover,
Heidegger’s structure of Verfallen (falling)
grounds these attachments to serve a critical
function in our inherent insecure natures. To
this end, our experience with attachments, in
their various forms, can be considered an im-
portant source of being and part of the back-
ground conditions responsible for disclosing an
intelligible and knowable world in everyday
life.
Dasein and Human Development
To connect the developmental insights of at-
tachment theory with Heideggerian thought, a
more in depth analysis of Dasein is needed. As
previously mentioned, Heidegger allocates the
ontological source of Dasein’s everyday being
(everydayness) to the sociocultural milieu (das
Man).5 In this way, Dasein is considered to have
already taken up a shared world of norms and
customs, as well as ways to interpret and feel;
that is, practical working knowledge of the
world. Dreyfus (1991) contended that socializa-
tion and interpersonal understanding are to “be
taken over before there can be any Dasein with
REUTHER
thoughts and activities at all” (p. 145). With this
analysis, it only makes sense to talk about Da-
sein as already having a “stand” on its exis-
tence. It is to this extent that Dasein is already
individuated (Letteri, 2009); that is, having its
own “distinct” being, grounded in the inherent
relational and social connectedness offered in
being-with and being-in-the-world. Undoubt-
edly, the Dasein Heidegger used as the basis for
his existential investigation is the type of being
that exists as we would expect an adult human
to exist. If Dasein is reserved for an adult hu-
man being, where do infants and children fit in
the conception of Dasein? How can the early,
postbirth experiences, such as in infancy and
childhood, contribute to the understanding of
Dasein and everyday being?
Invariably, from the moment of birth, infants
are affected by a human world (this is clear by
the innate, basic disposition revealing attach-
ment behaviors of crying, smiling, etc.), and,
most importantly, are positioned to be affected
by other human beings and human social events
in very special ways (Stern, 2000). It is to this
extent that infants are thrown into the human
social world. Although they are not considered
Dasein in the same way as adults, the activities,
possibilities, and ways of understanding a hu-
manly constructed world, which infants and
children certainly acquire and express as they
develop, would not be possible if they did not
already exist in a shared human world, engaging
in practices with other human beings within
sociocultural systems.
Parents (as caregivers), which are typically
the first and primary attachment figures, are also
the first and most significant engagement in-
fants have with the social world. Phenomenol-
ogist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2010) empha-
sized that the relations with parents are always
relations with the larger sociocultural world. He
stated that, “[d]ue to the behavior of the parents
toward the child, the child immediately finds
himself [sic] in contact with cultural phenome-
non” (p. 304). As such, events and phenomena
that occur on the social and cultural levels will
5
This article focuses on the sociocultural milieu (das
Man) as the constituting aspect of Dasein’s everyday un-
derstanding; however, Dasein’s everyday understanding
and the sociocultural milieu are primordially constituted by
temporality (Zeitlichkeit) itself, understood through the dy-
namics of historical movements and time periods.
 ON OUR EVERYDAY BEING
arise within and further contextualize the par-
ent⫺infant interactions (Sameroff, 1983).
These include things like belief systems, cul-
tural and religious practices, economic hard-
ships, and anything that involves the shared
social world. From our earliest days, we are
always already immersed in and can never be
separate from the shared cultural conditions,
phenomena, and practices that make up our
existence. This inherent relational situation ex-
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poses how our possibilities of comportment are
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always a result of being-with others, which pre-
supposes the existential structure of being-with.
In this way, an infant is a being-in-the-world.
Given this primordial position, Dasein is always
an ontological possibility, just not his or her
own at that point. Medard Boss (1979/1994)
stated that because the infant “is not yet an
independent Dasein capable of carrying out its
own being” (p. 243), the infant’s fledgling Dasein
remains fully absorbed in the primary caregiver’s
Dasein and way of being-in-the-world. Absorbed
and anchored in this relational position, they lack
the contextual “individuated” stance present in
Dasein. So, how does an infant or child press into
Dasein and carry out its own being? This question
becomes the central topic for the rest of this anal-
ysis.
Given that the infant is a being-in-the-
world who possesses Dasein as its own-most
ontological possibility, there is an innate, ex-
istential motivation toward discovering and
experiencing the possibilities offered by the
human Dasein’s attunement to the world and
others as being-in-the-world. Heidegger
(1927/1962) stated that this everyday being is
“precisely that being which is ’between’ birth
and death” (p. 276). That is to say, to account
for the everyday being of Dasein, we must
look at the entire history, from birth forward.
Boss (1963, 1979/1994) contended that we
extract our Dasein from or fundamental be-
ing-with others. Similarly, Dreyfus (1991) as-
serted the “human organism starts Daseining
gradually” (pp. 187–188), starting from birth
and taking “a stand on itself by pressing into
human possibilities” (p. 187). To press into
and subsequently to take up these possibili-
ties, the infant “must be socialized into
shared, ongoing activities by imitating people
and accumulating the necessary experiences
until it begins to do what [the] one does” (p.
187). Fundamentally saturated in this social-
107
ization is an always “sensing” of how to feel
in situations, as according to Heidegger, we
can never be without our primordial affected-
ness (Befindlichkeit) as mood. As such,
through the lived experiences with others, the
infant or child must therefore feel into his or
her Dasein when developing into adolescence
and adulthood in order to take up the mean-
ings of the world.
From the initial absorption in a parent’s
Dasein and being-in-the-world, such as a
mother (Boss, 1979/1994), the infant can be-
gin to press into his or her own Dasein and
way of being. As people advance from in-
fancy through childhood and adolescence to
adulthood, relationships with others typically
increase in number and complexity. In all,
further pressing into his or her own Dasein
means taking up different modes of being by
way of lived experience from the myriad re-
lationships within the sociocultural milieu,
with attachment relationships as an important
specific source. In regard to this position, it is
important to note that, due to the inherent
uncertainty of the world, we always already
maintain an implicit readiness to become ab-
sorbed in order to take-up these modes of
being. Our falling (Verfallen) into the “they,”
starting from initial absorption in the primary
caregiver’s Dasein and continuing to other
sociocultural attachments (e.g., peer groups,
intimate partners, religions) through lifetime
development, facilitates the striving for security
and safety in established worldly understand-
ings and sociocultural systems of meanings. We
“fall” into the modes of being provided by at-
tachments to cope with our thrownness.
Still, Dasein is not to be considered a devel-
opmental milestone like adolescence or adult-
hood (although developmental milestones can
be considered one component of human exis-
tence), but rather as a moving toward apprehen-
sion of his or her Lichtung over time, by way of
being-with others through sociocultural con-
texts. For example, it would be akin to increas-
ing the brightness of a light set on a dimmer
switch in a dark room, illuminating more pos-
sibilities of the world to apprehend. The forth-
coming sections will address how attachment
activity is situated in being-in-the-world and
how it is a source of everyday being.
 108 REUTHER
Attachment Activity and Emotional
Experience as Being-in-the-World
Attachment theory positions human beings as
always attuned and oriented in some way to the
social world, which Heidegger would affirm.
Bowlby (1969/1982) stated that, from birth, the
infant has a discriminative favor toward the
actions of other human beings, including
“marked bias to respond in special ways to
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several kinds of stimuli that commonly emanate
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from a human being” (p. 265). These include
human facial patterns, environmental move-
ment, and higher pitched voices. Moreover, at-
tachment behaviors are engaged, such as crying,
smiling, clinging and following, which increase
the likelihood of others responding and main-
taining proximity to the infant. From the mo-
ment of birth, infants are open to and are active
seekers within a human social world, orienting
toward others to engage with them (Stern,
1977). Consider, for example, a crying infant
due to separation from the caregiver. The care-
giver may, in response to the crying, pick up the
infant, allowing for embrace, which will prompt
other attachment behaviors. This will further
elicit a response from the caregiver, and so on.
Here, infants are not only born into being af-
fected by a human social world, but their mere
presence and activity also affects the world and
people around them. Occurring in an already
present intersubjective world, these engage-
ments increase in sophistication (Trevarthen,
1979, 2003) over time, facilitating the rapid
forming and tacit “figuring out” of relationships
in the human world. Mitchell (2000) support-
ively suggested that through this often repetitive
and “complex choreography of behaviors in
which participants cyclically cue and respond to
each other in turn” (p. 60), intimate relation-
ships and ways to handle situations are formed.
These basic exchanges between the infant and
caregiver, therefore, always consist in this in-
tersubjective, reciprocal and mutually constitut-
ing activity, as each member constitutes the
other’s actions. Consequently, the full meaning
of the experience is only revealed in its contex-
tual totality.
However, given that infants lack organized
verbal language, the primary means of commu-
nication is through affective expression. This
affective expressivity is quite powerful, and is
central to what Trevarthen (2003) called a mu-
tual “expressive and receptive sociability” (p.
236) that allows for the discovery of experi-
ences that are uniquely human. Always present
and saturated in this activity are underlying
affective and emotional tones that reveal how
the activity is meaningful. Merleau-Ponty sup-
portively added that this affectivity is funda-
mentally embodied, in that it always involves
the corporeal body. This can easily be seen in an
infant’s use of hands, arms, and mouth when
interacting with others and the world. These
actions are part of, and embedded in, this affec-
tive expressivity. In this way, the infant’s rela-
tions to others and the world are not to be
understood as minds and extended body-
objects, but rather as embodied lived experi-
ences. Accordingly, these affective experiences
are not isolative “things” that reside in the
minds. This activity is, therefore, an interactive,
transpersonal process (Mitchell, 2000) that is
situated in and “coconstituted within ongoing
relational systems” (Stolorow, 2011, p. 26).
Even with the development of language to sym-
bolize experiences, affects and emotions remain
the “principal feature of intimate relationships
throughout life” (Bowlby, 1988, p. 121). In
sum, the experiences are shared and mutually
constitutive, with the affect emerging from the
between of infant and attachment figure, within
the social contexts of the engagement and par-
ticipants’ relational histories. Our oftentimes
“internal,” overly cognitive ways of understand-
ing how we feel in the world is, therefore, not
how we truly relate at the most basic level.
This position fits within Heidegger’s concep-
tion of moods and other revealing modes of
Befindlichkeit, such as emotions, feelings, and
affects. In support of Heidegger, Charles Gui-
gnon (1984) wrote that these moods and similar
affective experiences “are discovered not by
looking inward, but rather by getting a feel for
the entire situation” (p. 236). Taken this way,
human beings are always accessing meaning-
disclosing emotions by looking outward toward
their involvement in social activity—in which
their first and arguably most important experi-
ences are with the affective and emotionally
laden engagements with attachment figures.
Continuing with the previous example, when a
caregiver smiles and displays positive affect
toward the infant, and the infant responds with
a smile, cooing, and positive affect, the infant’s
emotional experience is not something that re-
 ON OUR EVERYDAY BEING
sides solely in the infant, but rather arises from
the engagement with the caregiver. Moreover,
the caregiver’s positive affect was not some-
thing that resides solely in them, but emerges
in the context of their attunement to the infant.
Using Heidegger’s framework, the infant is “in”
the world with others; that is, involved in the
embedded affective activity with attachment
figures as being-in-the-world.
It is important to consider that being-in the
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embedded activity of these attachment relation-
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ships is a type of being-with others. There is no
way of understanding a person without some
relation to the human world and, more specifi-
cally, the others of that world. We not only look
to our sociocultural system to find what things
mean and how they matter, but we also engage
with specific people and groups, particularly our
attachments, to provide the specific ways of
attuning to and understanding the human world.
Affective experiences with attachments are the
first within the sociocultural system to provide a
grasping of our thrownness as well as exposing
and articulating various modes of being-in-the-
world throughout life. Thus, resulting attach-
ment relationships can be viewed as a special
type of being-with others that disclose the given
possibilities of being.
At the most basic level, these modes of hu-
man being are not to be seen as individualistic
assemblies constructed within isolative subjec-
tive minds from external impositions; instead,
they arise from embodied coconstitutive em-
bedded engagements of existing together in be-
ing-in-the-world. They are out there in the
world, embedded in the “between” of people,
saturated in the relational fabric of human life.
Seen in this way, subjective minds and external
worlds only figure into a person’s experiential
understandings as derivative and reflective con-
cepts arising from the “background milieu or
situation” of being-in the world (Carman,
2003).
Attachments as Sources for Everyday Being
Attachments, Establishing Security, and the
Existential Role of Anxiety and Fear
Separation in the presence of a stressor or
unfamiliar situation often provokes distress in
the form of fear, anxiety, and protest, which
prompts the seeking of attachment figures for
109
safety and security (Bowlby, 1969/1982, 1980,
1988). In this way, the infant or child will look
or move toward the attachment figure for vali-
dation and regulation of his or her experience.
Consequently, the attachment’s affective attun-
ement is critical to how the child will subse-
quently respond and proceed. This separation
anxiety exposes the infant’s reliance on attach-
ment figures for navigating and developing a
grasping of how to relate to and feel about the
world. Bowlby (1988) viewed this form of anx-
iety as a fundamental “human disposition” and
the process of how it is handled as an important
aspect of early human life.
Anxiety and fear are both emphasized by
Heidegger as central to human existence.
Heidegger (1927/1962) stated the difference
“phenomenally” between anxiety and fear is
“that in the face of which one has anxiety is not
an entity within-the-world” (p. 231), while fear,
in contrast, has directedness toward something
in the world—it has been objectified. Further,
the pervasive uncertainty and unknown nature
of anxiety confirms our enduring dependency
on the public “they-self” for systems of mean-
ing and significance. Consequently, Heidegger
viewed anxiety as the primordial orientation
that exposes our Dasein as fundamentally inse-
cure, “unsettled,” and unknown; we, as Daseins,
are the source of anxiety due to our existential
predicament. When confronted with anxiety,
“[e]veryday familiarity collapses” (Heidegger,
1927/1962, p. 233), rendering a “world col-
lapse.” In these ways, anxiety is more terrifying
and primal than fear, and, as a result, we seek to
displace this anxiety with fear.
Although Heidegger and Bowlby discussed
anxiety and fear in different ways, in both their
writings they remain core human emotional ex-
periences. Given this, how can Bowlby’s treat-
ment of separation anxiety fit existentially
within Heideggerian thought? On this note, Ir-
vin Yalom (1980) has suggested that “at the
level prior to thought and language the child
may experience the inchoate anxiety of nonbe-
ing; and that anxiety, in the child as in the adult,
seeks to become fear” (p. 102). Perhaps the
separation anxiety experienced during the con-
frontation with an unfamiliar situation without
the proximal support of the attachment can be
interpreted as confrontation with the uncertainty
and “the unknown” of the world. When this
occurs, the infant or child will cease exploring
 110 REUTHER
the environment and react in anxious protest: by
in large, the world “breaks down,” rendering the
infant anxiously seeking the attachment figure.
However, because the infant or child lacks a
fully constituted self-identity (Dasein) and con-
sidering the reaction is directed toward the ab-
sence of an attachment figure, separation anxi-
ety is to be considered a manifest form of fear
rather than anxiety, at least in the sense
Heidegger has described. Additionally, separa-
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tion anxiety is an ontic experience, while the
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anxiety Heidegger discussed is clearly ontolog-
ical. The infant or child is not yet (existentially)
able to take on the inchoate anxiety, because,
according to Heidegger, Dasein is the source of
anxiety, and without his or her own Dasein,
there is no way of confrontation—which ac-
counts for the looking-to and immersion in the
other’s Dasein and being-in-the-world. Just as
the infant or child is unable fully to care for
itself in the world, he or she is not fully pre-
pared to confront his or her owner-most anxiety.
Nevertheless, despite Heidegger’s likely in-
terpretation of Bowlby’s separation anxiety as
fear, there is clear existential grounding. The
structure of falling (Verfallen) comes into focus
in ontological development such that the phe-
nomenology of separation can be viewed as the
beginnings of how we “fall” into our own Da-
sein by fleeing into the “they.” Through this
means, the fledgling Dasein is able to literally
put a “face” to the disruption, and within that
mutual contextual engagement an unfolding of
how the situation matters is revealed. There is a
looking-to-the-other for affective regulation in
that situation, and, from the way in which it is
handled, a way to be emerges. It is essentially
through the relational context with the other
Dasein (attachment figure) that existential anx-
iety is immediately displaced to a fear reaction.
Thus, the motivation to be reunited with the
other to quell the fear is, to this scale, cast as the
first coping with our existential predicament by
absorbing or falling into the “they” for a way to
be in the world. As Heidegger (1927/1962)
pointed out, “the turning-away of falling is
grounded rather in anxiety, which in turn is
what first makes fear possible” (p. 230, empha-
sis in original). Here, rather than the “no” thing
of anxiety, it becomes directed at a less terrify-
ing “some” thing of fear—in this case, the at-
tachment figure’s absence. Anxiety remains
prima facie in human existence, even if it is too
terrifying to face directly in early development.
Several theorists (Vandenberg, 1991; Yalom,
1980; Maurer, 1966) have mentioned how sep-
aration anxiety may be seen as an early mani-
festation of existential anxiety. The account
provided in this section may be understood as
one way to connect them.
When conceptualized in this fashion, attach-
ments can be viewed not only to serve a critical
existential purpose of survival, but also in how
(and in what ways) our affectedness (Befind-
lichkeit) and falling (Verfallen) manifest as any
sense of relational stability, structure, security,
and belonging to handle the anxiety from an
inherently uncertain existence. These early ex-
periences of finding safety and security in at-
tachments have been seen as early manifesta-
tions of our ongoing struggle to invest trustingly
in close bonds with other people, such as friends
and intimate partners (Mikulincer, Florian, &
Hirschberger, 2004) as well as larger sociocul-
tural entities, including peer groups, religions,
cultures, and the like (Vandenberg, 1991)—all
of which are entities that constitute who we are
and what matters in specific contexts. Conse-
quently, early activity with attachments will
have deep and long-lasting implications for our
contextualized world disclosure.
Attachment Experiences and Accounts for
the Basis of Everyday Being
How attachment figures respond to the
child’s affective experiences, and what tran-
spires during this activity, largely provide the
early foundation for how safe and secure the
world is, with implications for how the child
will feel, respond to, and function in it, as well
as supply the context for various emotional ex-
periences and their meanings to arise. In one
particular case, if the attachment figure is reli-
ably available to address the child’s needs and
consistently responding in caring and support-
ive ways when distressed, a secure base will
likely form. For example, when encountering
new surroundings, a child might venture from
the secure base and periodically look back and
orient to the attachment figure with a look of
caution. If met with encouragement by the at-
tachment figure, he or she may reciprocate the
affect and continue the exploration of the world
under the affective safety and support that arose
from the engagement. Once learned that stres-
 ON OUR EVERYDAY BEING
sors can be resolved and “anxiety” can be man-
aged through the availability and attunement of
early attachments, it opens up the possibility of
a world in which safety and security can be
established. It is through this experience that a
safe and secure world becomes an ontological
possibility. Children with a secure base are bet-
ter able to focus on further discovering and
exploring their world, and can become increas-
ingly self-reliant, engage cooperatively with
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others, and provide sympathy and support to
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others in distress (Bowlby, 1988)—all essential
traits to operate effectively and adaptively in the
social world. Moreover, research has shown,
rather consistently, that “a more positive and
open self-concept” is related to secure attach-
ment (particularly mother⫺infant), which is
“revealed not only in explicit self-descriptions,
but also in implicit self-concept” (Goodvin,
Meyer, Thompson, & Hayes, 2008, p. 435). As
a result, children will have the ability to dis-
cover it in the world beyond the primary attach-
ment, such as through other sociocultural enti-
ties, including teachers, peer groups, intimate
partners, and others.
Generally, consistent and reliable presences
of attachments engender structure in the chaotic
and unpredictable world, helping orient the
child toward a flexible and resilient existence.
This sense of belongingness will project to the
disclosure of future situations. The exploration
and exposure to experience different facets of
the sociocultural world illuminate a general
openness of possibilities for the Dasein he or
she takes up.
If the primary attachment is inconsistent,
generally aloof, responds with delay or even
outright rejects the child, a general struggle for
a felt sense of security and safety emerges.
Without the consistent attunement to the child’s
affective states, separation anxiety is experi-
enced quite strongly and persistently, resulting
in crippling anxiety and fear. Largely, the lack
of responsiveness or utter rejection to the in-
fant’s or child’s emotional needs results in in-
secure attachments. To this end, the child re-
mains consumed with the unpredictability and
uncertainty of the attachment’s presence, which
limits the exploration of the world. The world
that is revealed is one drenched in anxiety, fear,
and incoherence. Because consistent and pre-
dictable safety and security may not be onto-
logically available, the child will perform com-
111
pensatory behaviors in response to the
attachment in an attempt to create some type of
relational structure and displace anxiety. For
example, in the case of inconsistent or delayed
responsiveness, the child may manifest in anx-
ious obedience and preoccupation with attach-
ments, with a general lack of concern for others
(Bowlby, 1988). Furthermore, in the case of
open rejection, the child may develop ambiva-
lent attitudes toward attachments; that is, he or
she may display anxious possessive behavior
mixed with anger toward the attachment figure
(Bowlby, 1973, 1988). These behavioral re-
sponses are a general attempt to maintain the
relational bond with the attachment figure, and
are a full result of the coconstitutive activity that
demonstrates a particular way of functioning
within these systems. From the activity, patterns
emerge, which reveal a type of relational struc-
ture that discloses meanings of how to feel and
get along in the human social world.
Unrecognized, invalidated, and unacceptable
feelings are subsequently dimmed out of being-
in-the-world, and, as a result, there is a narrow-
ing, constricting, distorting, and inflexible ren-
dering of potential modes of being. Clearly, if
certain experiences were never recognized, val-
idated, or inconsistently responded to, the child
had no access to them and would be subse-
quently closed off to those modes of being. This
could take the form of emotions in general
(most likely positive emotions) or emotionally
“felt” experiences, such as trust. As such, these
experiences would simply not be a factor in the
person’s world disclosure. Moreover, according
to Boss (1979/1994), “unacceptable emotions”
(i.e., negative emotions that might jeopardize
the bond, such as anger toward the attachment
figure) that are dimmed out of a person’s being-
in-the-world can become “obtrusive” in every-
day life. That is to say, we can still be affected
by them. Take, for example, a person exploring
a darkened office; just because a desk cannot be
seen does not mean the person cannot knock
into and be affected by it. Similarly, although a
person has pushed away an experience, espe-
cially an early one with an attachment, does not
mean that it may not have an impact on the
projective disclosure of events in everyday life.
Quite clearly, the actual loss of an attach-
ment, whether through prolonged or permanent
departure or death, will have a significant im-
pact on the child’s development. According to
 112 REUTHER
Bowlby (1980), in this relational loss, the child
will proceed from experiencing the anxious pro-
test of separation to experiencing despair, rep-
resented by sadness and withdrawal from en-
gaging the social world. As wrapped up in the
lost attachment figure’s Dasein, a serious lack-
ing emerges because quite literally part of his or
her constitutive being is gone. Consequently,
the child is literally thrown into confrontation
with his or her own annihilation or nonbeing.
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Moreover, Adah Maurer (1966) has suggested
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that, at an implicit level “below true cognition,”
the child “knows” that this type of loss is es-
sentially a loss to his or her connection with life.
This is perhaps the starkest example of the
destabilization of the child’s world. The form-
less anxiety of nonbeing that arises from this
loss situation is displaced to objective fears in
the child’s life, which can easily lead to with-
drawal from the social world and subsequent
despair. From this, a kind of narrowing and
constricting of his or her being-in-the-world is
rendered, which may have long-term maladap-
tive consequences for the handling of other
stressors and anxiety-provoking situations in
life (Yalom, 1980).
The aforementioned positions, in many criti-
cal ways, disclose the possibilities of the social
world and shape a person’s (Dasein) openness.
It is important to mention that these different
expressions of attachment activity reveal modes
that still remain ways of encountering and ap-
prehending a human world that arise from the
primordial relational activity with the attach-
ment figure as being-in-the-world—albeit some
will consequent a more “open” existence, while
others a more constricted and limited one.
The general examples based on Bowlby’s
work provided in this article demonstrate how
vastly different a child’s world is initially dis-
closed than an adult’s. These early attachment
relationships are important from a foundational
position for establishing a felt sense of safety
and for providing the initial contexts for the
emergence and articulation of specific affective
experiences, which are carried forward in the
formation of and activity with attachments in
later life. Other attachment relationships, such
as peer groups, intimate relationships, and so-
ciocultural or religious entities, will also have
bearing on a person’s world disclosure. Further-
more, because affective experiences are active
in the negotiation of reality (Lutz & White,
1986) that disclose the possibilities of a social
world and how things matter (Heidegger, 1927/
1962), the affective-saturated activity with the
various forms of attachments (e.g., parents, peer
groups) will reveal certain sociocultural prac-
tices and ways of handling the world that are
also modeled and absorbed. This leads to the
acquisition of differentiated and nuanced ways
of apprehending a meaningful world. That said,
a person’s exact understanding and behavior
manifestations of happiness, anger, anxiety, and
so forth, and their contextual meanings, may
vary from person to person and culture to cul-
ture, because the functional expressions built
into the affective experiences will differ de-
pending on parental, familiar, social, and cul-
tural engagements. Simply put, we learn from
our various attachments through our experi-
ences of being-with them. These attachments, in
profoundly practical ways, are deeply con-
nected to our existential predicament; that is,
they furnish us with meaningful ways that, more
or less effectively, help us deal, compensate,
and adjust to the uncertainty of the world and
our own finitude (Becker, 1973/1997).
In many ways— beginning from our original
parental caregiving relationships and forward—
ongoing attachments coconstitute the types of
people we are and comport ourselves to be in
everyday life. Bowlby (1973) noted that, due to
the complex networks these various types rela-
tionships form over time, the precise origin of
the ways we feel and behave in the world in
various contexts are often unclear—not only to
other people, but also to ourselves. It is to this
extent that it can be said we often get on with
things with little recollection or reflection to
what we are feeling or doing, simply just having
ways of feeling about ourselves and dealing
with others in the world. These modes are im-
plicit ways of making sense of our thrownness
into social world given a certain sociocultural
background, which will project to future con-
texts and have active bearing on the Dasein a
person takes up and the available disclosive
modes of his or her own “individuated” Dasein
and being-in-the-world. Although we can see
how this might lead to different ways of living
in the world, according to Heidegger, it actually
discloses a different kind of world and therefore,
in many ways, people will go about life in a
different world. It is through this ongoing social
and developmental process with attachments
 ON OUR EVERYDAY BEING
that a person distinguishes as a distinct entity
with his or her own Dasein. Attachment figures,
seen in this way, function as relational and
affective references for the person’s projective
disclosure, a type of existential vehicle for ways
of being. Even with the establishment of a per-
son’s own Dasein, it is clear that attachments,
and specifically early ones, are carried forward,
thus remaining critical in the ongoing process of
disclosing the possibilities of things mattering.
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Because we are constituted by our relationship
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to the human social world one way or another,
attachments serve as one particular source.
It is critical to note that these sociocultural
attachments—in the various ways we are af-
fected by them—provide ready-made modes of
being into which we tacitly “feel” and “fall.”
Heidegger would contend that when attempting
to cope with the terror, uncertainty, and dread
that is ever-present in the world, which we do
continuously from birth, we fall into these par-
ticular modes of the “they-self,” which are in-
authentic expressions of ourselves. They are
inauthentic insofar as they are not originally
ours. Their revealing of the world as mattering
through affective engagements with attach-
ments are already always there as part of the
sociocultural milieu in which we rely—and it is
in exactly that way that they engender safety, as
what is known. Despite providing a protective
barrier against anxiety, it is but a mere socio-
cultural construction that, in a way, instills us
with a false sense of security and certitude in the
world. This is because, ultimately, attachments
in their various forms can (and often do) even-
tually fail us, leading to a “world collapse”
(such as through the ending of an intimate
relationship, traumatic event, or ostracism
from cultural or religious groups), exposing
us to the chaotic abyss of the unknown. Al-
though attachments protect, they also simul-
taneous prevent; in other words, they prevent
us from taking on our freedom that can only
be grasped from the confrontation with anxi-
ety. However, this is nothing to be alarmed or
surprised about, because our inauthentic ev-
erydayness, as different expressions of the
“they-self,” remain our primary mode of ex-
istence (Heidegger, 1927/1962), and are actu-
ally quite important and critical in everyday
functioning.
113
Concluding Remarks
Attachments take on a variety of forms and
move from the actual need for presence, which
has been shown as critical in creating a safe and
secure world in infancy and childhood. The
anxiety-managing qualities provide the ground-
ing for early exploration of the world and sub-
sequently the opening up, constriction, and dis-
tortions of future human potentialities. Our
being is expressed through the contexts of these
relationships; that is, they show up as a result of
what is publicly available, initially in early at-
tachment relationships, and then within social
activity with others as attachments in the socio-
cultural milieu. Early and ongoing activity with
attachments, therefore, serves an ontologically
revelatory function; that is, through our ontic
affective and emotional experiences with others
as attachments that implicitly known ways to
handle situations arise from the embedded ac-
tivity of everyday life, and through these means
modes of being-in-the-world are able to be
grasped, extracted, and apprehended. Given
Heidegger’s view that the sociocultural world
constitutes a person’s everyday being, and that
attachments are important members of this
world, attachments can be seen as particular
sources of everyday being. Thus, grounded in
being-in-the-world, it is through the emotion-
ally saturated activity with attachments that we
take up our own modes of being and “individ-
uate” our Dasein; however, the ties to these
constituting entities remain strong in our “fall-
enness.” This taking up of being as beings-in-
the-world occurs before internal⫺external and
subject⫺object distinction. Therefore, we can
only talk about character organization, ego de-
velopment, internalization, constructions of
schemas and the like as abstractions— consti-
tuted from and secondary to—the fundamental
relational and emotional primacy of being-in-
the-world.
The present analysis has provided a sketch
of how our everyday being is generally con-
stituted through these important sociocultural
attachments over a person’s lifetime, mainly
focused on the structures of Befindlichkeit and
Verfallen in being-in-the-world and the sig-
nificance of anxiety, fear, and other moods
and emotional experiences. Clearly, these at-
tachments serve a critical purpose in early
development to create a stable, albeit inau-
 114 REUTHER
thentic, self-identity. Still, a more authentic
existence can be discovered as an adult hu-
man being, as Dasein. Heidegger’s point is
that, instead of Dasein fleeing into these at-
tachments, accept inherent uncertainty and
move past it. This is addressed through
Heidegger’s (1927/1962) concept of “liberat-
ing solicitude,” from which we care for the
other by “freeing” or “emancipating” the
other from the belief that these worldly at-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
tachments are enduring, permanent, and se-
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
cure. By doing so, we open him or her up to
being ontologically insecure and encourage
his or her confrontation with this anxiety
head-on, allowing for personal responsibility
for who he or she is, given the finite choices
there are to make. Although this concept de-
serves further attention, especially when con-
sidering authentic being, it is beyond the
scope of the current analysis.
The importance of attachment relationships
in social and relational aspects of human growth
and development have been shown to be quite
clear. This is a continuation of the recent move-
ment in psychology and psychoanalysis to
move past Cartesian dualistic notions of iso-
lated subjects and decontextualized external
worlds in order to better fit with the embedded-
ness, context-dependency, and mutual constitu-
tion of our actions and social being (e.g., Stol-
orow, 2000, 2011; Frie, 2008). Casting human
development in this framework allows for a rich
backdrop for further analysis that fits with con-
tinuously emerging post-Cartesian contextual,
social, embodied, and action-oriented trends
in both theoretical and empirical psychology,
with its greatest utility perhaps being in clin-
ical practice and psychotherapy. This article,
building on existing work, also establishes
groundwork for a developmental ontology of
human being. Further directions also include
establishment of a more in-depth and com-
plete account of the development of human
being, specifically in Heidegger’s existential
analytic, which includes how sociocultural
attachments and relational theories help to
elucidate the other existential structures of
being-in-the-world, such as understanding
(Verstehen) and discursiveness (Rede), as
well as developmentally based pathways to
inauthentic and authentic being across the
lifetime.
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Received September 8, 2012
Revision received April 8, 2013
Accepted April 10, 2013 䡲