This term is central to the theory of Attachment. It stems from observations that an infant or young child will use contact with a caregiver (eye contact, physical contact, verbal contact) to re-orient and reassure himself in an uncertain situation.

The Strange Situation

The "Strange Situation" procedure with infants, is used to assess the Attachment style (i.e. which of the Attachment Definitions), best illustrates this. When the child in a new room knows that his or her mother (for instance) is there, he or she can begin to explore (often via play), and can overcome a momentary 'overwhelm' (caused, say, when a tower of bricks he is constructing falls) by 'checking back' with the parent. Assuming the parent can adequately deploy Mentalization of the child's predicament (perhaps deploying Marked mirroring of his or her surprise/shock in a playful way) the child is quickly reassured and can resume exploration. In order to use the caregiver in this way, the child must activate an Internal Working Model that associates Security with the relationship with this parent; that in circumstances of difficulty this figure "will most probably act confidently, competently, benignly enough to get us through..."

In therapeutic work

In the therapeutic context, the AMBIT worker is aiming to rekindle whatever vestige of this 'Secure Base' there remains in the patient's Internal Working Models of relatedness, so as to allow the patient to begin to explore his or her inner and outer world, as part of the task of recovery.

An example in 15 seconds

Demonstrated by Pip in just 15 seconds, here's the principle of the Secure Base in action.

What follows, of course, is just a crude attempt to Mentalize the fine beast that is Pip; to make sense of behaviour on the basis of imagined intentional mental states.

So Pip hears the kiss-kiss sound, and knows he's close and safe, so he can immediately do what a dog must do... Explore. That's what the Secure Base is for... To facilitate exploration of the world.

For our clients, the "world" that they may need to explore might not be a big field, but instead their inner world, or the tangled circumstances that have conspired to bring them to this predicament, here, now. It may be just as (or rather a lot more) daunting to head into that territory as it is for Pip, whose "world" is just a socking great field.

You see Pip check back for just a fraction of a second. Sees master, carries straight on....

Stops... Looks ahead of him... Recognises this is a Very Big Field.

Freezes. What to do?

It's a Very Big Field indeed.

We imagine a small flutter of uncertainty. Attachment Behaviours are triggered... So he has a good long look at his master. Straight after that (I can tell you) he's off like a rocket. But still a glance here, there, now and then, says that it's the secure base that lets him explore.

How do we go about creating secure base experiences, especially for clients whose experience of help may have been anything but helpful? That is what AMBIT is all about.