It Takes a Village: Advancing Attachment Theory and Recovering the Roots of Human Health with the Seven Essential Needs
Published in Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work, 2022
Abstract
This paper argues that attachment theory remains influential partly because it offers a simple story, but that simplicity is costly: it reduces a complex constellation of needs to safety/security and places responsibility on a single (female) caregiver. The article proposes a comprehensive alternative grounded in Maslow’s Eupsychian question—how to build a society capable of actuating full human potential—by relocating the locus of health and development to the “village” and building social systems explicitly geared toward meeting the Circle of Seven Essential Needs. It argues that “health” is not primarily an individual achievement but an environmental outcome: stable attachment, robust development, and long-run wellbeing depend on meeting essential needs across childhood and adulthood. Building on attachment theory and broader developmental research, it reframes healing and prevention as collective responsibilities—requiring families, communities, and institutions designed around human needs rather than extraction, neglect, and chaos.
Key Points
- Extends attachment theory toward a broader needs-based public health frame.
- Critiques attachment theory’s reductive needs assumptions and Eurocentric framing.
- Re-centers development as a societal design problem, not a private maternal duty.
- Links the model to Eupsychian psychology and the institutional conditions of flourishing.
- Introduces/uses the Circle of Seven Essential Needs as an organizing model for human development.
- Treats “the village” as infrastructure: relationships, stability, and institutional design matter.
Repositions many downstream problems as predictable outcomes of systemic deprivation and instability.
Recommended citation: Sosteric, Mike, & Ratkovic, Gina. (2022). "It Takes a Village: Advancing Attachment Theory and Recovering the Roots of Human Health with the Seven Essential Needs." *Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work*, 34(1), 113–127. https://doi.org/10.11157/anzswj-vol34iss1id887
Download Paper