Attachment Theory

In the 1950's, John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst, began creating Attachment Theory, which came from a blend of psychoanalysis and ethology. Up until then, psychoanalysis had been focusing primarily on intrapsychic structures. Affected by Konrad Lorenz's work on early imprinting, Bowlby, in his work with disturbed and delinquent children who were categorised as "affectionless", began to see the importance of the quality of the early relationship with the mother in the healthy development of the child. Conversely, he recognised that early environmental deficit or trauma was instrumental in creating neurosis. His work was developed by the research of Mary Ainsworth, in her Strange Situation experiments with young children. Though Bowlby had wanted to integrate his theory with psychoanalysis, his work on the whole was not well received there initially and instead came to stand as a discipline in its own right. Later, in some ways, Attachment Theory laid the foundation for the current development of Relational Psychoanalysis. His focus on research was also carried on by early childhood psychoanalysts like Daniel Stern. More recently still, Allan Schore has brought the neurobiology of affect regulation to the attachment styles originally developed by Bowlby. Fran Harwood