Opening up the unfamiliar and enabling new pathways for movement and becoming: Through, in, and beyond attachment

The philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari opens up vast potential to disrupt and explore some of the confines of attachment theory when considering the development of enchantment, wishful, and magical thinking in childhood. Through connection with the use of the fairy-tale, the authors seek to illuminate and illustrate the lines of flight, which activate resistance against the universalism of attachment theory and linear process of child development. In using the classic tale of Peter Pan as metaphor, and by applying Deleuzian philosophy and mythology, we aim to expand current thinking about the nature of childhood. By translating text into visual meaning, thus creating a lens with which to view an alternative pathway for child development, the complexity of the spatio-temporality of relationships as a contemporary adjunct to attachment theory, is materialised to produce an affective picture of the non-linear dimension and process of development in children. This affective genre illuminates the embodied and sensory aspects of ‘becoming’ which challenges a reductionist view of relationships. In doing so, this allows a ‘state change’ that enables professionals and scholars to see see differently.