John Bowlby
Encyclopedia
Edward John Mostyn "John" Bowlby (26 February 1907 – 2 September 1990) was a British psychologist
, psychiatrist
and psychoanalyst, notable for his interest in child development and for his pioneering work in attachment theory
.
, was surgeon to the King's Household, with a tragic history: at age five, Sir Anthony's own father, Thomas William Bowlby, (John's grandfather) was killed while serving as a war correspondent in the Opium Wars
.
Normally, Bowlby saw his mother only one hour a day after teatime, though during the summer she was more available. Like many other mothers of her social class, she considered that parental attention and affection would lead to dangerous spoiling of the children. Bowlby was lucky in that the nanny in his family was present throughout his childhood. When Bowlby was almost four years old, his beloved nanny, who was actually his primary caretaker in his early years, left the family. Later, he was to describe this as tragic as the loss of a mother.
At the age of seven, he was sent off to boarding school
, as was common for boys of his social status. In his work Separation: Anxiety and Anger, he revealed that he regarded it as a terrible time for him. He later said, "I wouldn't send a dog away to boarding school at age seven". Because of such experiences as a child, he displayed a sensitivity to children’s suffering throughout his life. However, with his characteristic attentiveness to the effects of age differences, Bowlby did consider boarding schools appropriate for children aged eight and older, and wrote, "If the child is maladjusted, it may be useful for him to be away for part of the year from the tensions which produced his difficulties, and if the home is bad in other ways the same is true. The boarding school has the advantage of preserving the child's all-important home ties, even if in slightly attenuated form, and, since it forms part of the ordinary social pattern of most Western communities today [1951], the child who goes to boarding-school will not feel different from other children. Moreover, by relieving the parents of the children for part of the year, it will be possible for some of them to develop more favorable attitudes toward their children during the remainder."
He married Ursula Longstaff, herself the daughter of a surgeon, on April 16, 1938, and they had four children, including (Sir) Richard Bowlby, who succeeded his uncle as third Baronet.
Bowlby died at his summer home on the Isle of Skye, Scotland
.
, winning prizes for outstanding intellectual performance. After Cambridge, he worked with maladjusted and delinquent children, then at the age of twenty-two enrolled at University College Hospital
in London. At the age of twenty-six, he qualified in medicine. While still in medical school he enrolled himself in the Institute for Psychoanalysis. Following medical school, he trained in adult psychiatry
at the Maudsley Hospital
. In 1937, aged 30, he qualified as a psychoanalyst
.
During World War II
, he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps
. After the war, he was Deputy Director of the Tavistock Clinic
, and from 1950, Mental Health Consultant to the World Health Organization
.
Because of his previous work with maladapted and delinquent children, he became interested in the development of children and began work at the Child Guidance Clinic in London. This interest was probably increased by a variety of wartime events involving separation of young children from familiar people; these included the rescue of Jewish children by the Kindertransport
arrangements, the evacuation of children from London to keep them safe from air raids, and the use of group nurseries to allow mothers of young children to contribute to the war effort. Bowlby was interested from the beginning of his career in the problem of separation and the wartime work of Anna Freud
and Dorothy Burlingham on evacuees and Rene Spitz
on orphans. By the late 1950s he had accumulated a body of observational and theoretical work to indicate the fundamental importance for human development of attachment from birth.
Bowlby was interested in finding out the actual patterns of family interaction involved in both healthy and pathological development. He focused on how attachment difficulties were transmitted from one generation to the next. In his development of attachment theory he propounded the idea that attachment behaviour was essentially an evolutionary survival strategy for protecting the infant from predators. Mary Ainsworth
, a student of Bowlby’s, further extended and tested his ideas, and in fact played the primary role in suggesting that several attachment styles existed.
The three most important experiences for Bowlby’s future work and the development of attachment theory were his work with:
's report on the mental health of homeless children in post-war Europe. The result was Maternal Care and Mental Health published in 1951.
Bowlby drew together such limited empirical evidence as existed at the time from across Europe and the USA. His main conclusions, that “the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his mother (or permanent mother substitute) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment” and that not to do so may have significant and irreversible mental health consequences, were both controversial and influential. The 1951 WHO publication was highly influential in causing widespread changes in the practices and prevalence of institutional care for infants and children, and in changing practices relating to the visiting of infants and small children in hospitals by parents. The theoretical basis was controversial in many ways. He broke with psychoanalytic theories which saw infants' internal life as being determined by fantasy rather than real life events. Some critics profoundly disagreed with the necessity for maternal (or equivalent) love in order to function normally, or that the formation of an ongoing relationship with a child was an important part of parenting. Others questioned the extent to which his hypothesis
was supported by the evidence. There was criticism of the confusion of the effects of privation (no primary attachment figure) and deprivation (loss of the primary attachment figure) and in particular, a failure to distinguish between the effects of the lack of a primary attachment figure and the other forms of deprivation and understimulation that may affect children in institutions.
The monograph was also used for political purposes to claim any separation from the mother was deleterious in order to discourage women from working and leaving their children in daycare by governments concerned about maximising employment for returned and returning servicemen. In 1962 WHO published Deprivation of maternal care: A Reassessment of its Effects to which Mary Ainsworth, Bowlby's close colleague, contributed with his approval, to present the recent research and developments and to address misapprehensions. This publication also attempted to address the previous lack of evidence on the effects of paternal deprivation.
According to Rutter
the importance of Bowlby's initial writings on 'maternal deprivation' lay in his emphasis that children's experiences of interpersonal relationships were crucial to their psychological development.
, namely Niko Tinbergen
, Konrad Lorenz
, and especially the rising star of ethology Robert Hinde
. Using the viewpoints of this emerging science and reading extensively in the ethology literature, Bowlby developed new explanatory hypotheses for what is now known as human attachment behaviour. In particular, on the basis of ethological evidence he was able to reject the dominant Cupboard Love
theory of attachment prevailing in psychoanalysis
and learning theory
of the 1940s and 1950s. He also introduced the concepts of environmentally stable or labile human behaviour allowing for the revolutionary combination of the idea of a species-specific genetic bias to become attached and the concept of individual differences in attachment security as environmentally labile strategies for adaptation to a specific childrearing niche. Alternatively, Bowlby’s thinking about the nature and function of the caregiver-child relationship influenced ethological research, and inspired students of animal behaviour such as Tinbergen, Hinde, and Harry Harlow
. Bowlby spurred Hinde to start his ground breaking work on attachment and separation in primates (monkeys and humans), and in general emphasized the importance of evolutionary thinking about human development that foreshadowed the new interdisciplinary approach of evolutionary psychology
. Obviously, the encounter of ethology and attachment theory
led to a genuine cross-fertilization" (Van der Horst, Van der Veer & Van IJzendoorn, 2007, p. 321).
According to attachment theory, attachment in infants is primarily a process of proximity seeking to an identified attachment figure in situations of perceived distress or alarm for the purpose of survival. Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with the infant, and who remain as consistent caregivers for some months during the period from about 6 months to two years of age. Parental responses lead to the development of patterns of attachment which in turn lead to 'internal working models' which will guide the individual's feelings, thoughts, and expectations in later relationships. In Bowlby's approach, the human infant is considered to have a need for a secure relationship with adult caregivers, without which normal social and emotional development will not occur.
As the toddler grows, it uses its attachment figure or figures as a "secure base" from which to explore. Mary Ainsworth
used this feature plus "stranger wariness" and reunion behaviours, other features of attachment behaviour, to develop a research tool called the "Strange Situation Procedure" for developing and classifying different attachment styles.
The attachment process is not gender specific as infants will form attachments to any consistent caregiver who is sensitive and responsive in social interactions with the infant. The quality of the social engagement appears to be more influential than amount of time spent.
,
which discusses Darwin's "mysterious illness" and whether it was psychosomatic.
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
, psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
and psychoanalyst, notable for his interest in child development and for his pioneering work in attachment theory
Attachment theory
Attachment theory describes the dynamics of long-term relationships between humans. Its most important tenet is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally. Attachment theory is an interdisciplinary study...
.
Family background
Bowlby was born in London to an upper-middle-class family. He was the fourth of six children and was brought up by a nanny in the British fashion of his class at that time. His father, Sir Anthony Alfred Bowlby, first BaronetBaronet
A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...
, was surgeon to the King's Household, with a tragic history: at age five, Sir Anthony's own father, Thomas William Bowlby, (John's grandfather) was killed while serving as a war correspondent in the Opium Wars
Opium Wars
The Opium Wars, also known as the Anglo-Chinese Wars, divided into the First Opium War from 1839 to 1842 and the Second Opium War from 1856 to 1860, were the climax of disputes over trade and diplomatic relations between China under the Qing Dynasty and the British Empire...
.
Normally, Bowlby saw his mother only one hour a day after teatime, though during the summer she was more available. Like many other mothers of her social class, she considered that parental attention and affection would lead to dangerous spoiling of the children. Bowlby was lucky in that the nanny in his family was present throughout his childhood. When Bowlby was almost four years old, his beloved nanny, who was actually his primary caretaker in his early years, left the family. Later, he was to describe this as tragic as the loss of a mother.
At the age of seven, he was sent off to boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
, as was common for boys of his social status. In his work Separation: Anxiety and Anger, he revealed that he regarded it as a terrible time for him. He later said, "I wouldn't send a dog away to boarding school at age seven". Because of such experiences as a child, he displayed a sensitivity to children’s suffering throughout his life. However, with his characteristic attentiveness to the effects of age differences, Bowlby did consider boarding schools appropriate for children aged eight and older, and wrote, "If the child is maladjusted, it may be useful for him to be away for part of the year from the tensions which produced his difficulties, and if the home is bad in other ways the same is true. The boarding school has the advantage of preserving the child's all-important home ties, even if in slightly attenuated form, and, since it forms part of the ordinary social pattern of most Western communities today [1951], the child who goes to boarding-school will not feel different from other children. Moreover, by relieving the parents of the children for part of the year, it will be possible for some of them to develop more favorable attitudes toward their children during the remainder."
He married Ursula Longstaff, herself the daughter of a surgeon, on April 16, 1938, and they had four children, including (Sir) Richard Bowlby, who succeeded his uncle as third Baronet.
Bowlby died at his summer home on the Isle of Skye, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
.
Career
Bowlby studied psychology and pre-clinical sciences at Trinity College, CambridgeTrinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
, winning prizes for outstanding intellectual performance. After Cambridge, he worked with maladjusted and delinquent children, then at the age of twenty-two enrolled at University College Hospital
University College Hospital
University College Hospital is a teaching hospital located in London, United Kingdom. It is part of the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is closely associated with University College London ....
in London. At the age of twenty-six, he qualified in medicine. While still in medical school he enrolled himself in the Institute for Psychoanalysis. Following medical school, he trained in adult psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
at the Maudsley Hospital
Maudsley Hospital
The Maudsley Hospital is a British psychiatric hospital in South London. The Maudsley is the largest mental health training institution in the country...
. In 1937, aged 30, he qualified as a psychoanalyst
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps
Royal Army Medical Corps
The Royal Army Medical Corps is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all British Army personnel and their families in war and in peace...
. After the war, he was Deputy Director of the Tavistock Clinic
Tavistock Clinic
The in London was founded in 1920 by Dr. Hugh Crichton-Miller, a psychiatrist who developed psychological treatments for shell-shocked soldiers during and after the First World War. The clinic's first patient was, however, a child. Its clinical services were always, therefore, for both children...
, and from 1950, Mental Health Consultant to the World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
.
Because of his previous work with maladapted and delinquent children, he became interested in the development of children and began work at the Child Guidance Clinic in London. This interest was probably increased by a variety of wartime events involving separation of young children from familiar people; these included the rescue of Jewish children by the Kindertransport
Kindertransport
Kindertransport is the name given to the rescue mission that took place nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig...
arrangements, the evacuation of children from London to keep them safe from air raids, and the use of group nurseries to allow mothers of young children to contribute to the war effort. Bowlby was interested from the beginning of his career in the problem of separation and the wartime work of Anna Freud
Anna Freud
Anna Freud was the sixth and last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to the newly born field of psychoanalysis...
and Dorothy Burlingham on evacuees and Rene Spitz
René Spitz
René Árpád Spitz was an American psychoanalyst of Hungarian origin.- Biography :Rene Spitz was born in Vienna and died in Denver, Colorado. From a wealthy Jewish family background, he spent most of his childhood in Hungary. After finishing his medical studies in 1910 Spitz discovered the work of...
on orphans. By the late 1950s he had accumulated a body of observational and theoretical work to indicate the fundamental importance for human development of attachment from birth.
Bowlby was interested in finding out the actual patterns of family interaction involved in both healthy and pathological development. He focused on how attachment difficulties were transmitted from one generation to the next. In his development of attachment theory he propounded the idea that attachment behaviour was essentially an evolutionary survival strategy for protecting the infant from predators. Mary Ainsworth
Mary Ainsworth
Mary Dinsmore Salter Ainsworth was a Canadian developmental psychologist known for her work in early emotional attachment with "The Strange Situation" as well as her work in the development of Attachment Theory.-Life:...
, a student of Bowlby’s, further extended and tested his ideas, and in fact played the primary role in suggesting that several attachment styles existed.
The three most important experiences for Bowlby’s future work and the development of attachment theory were his work with:
- Maladapted and delinquent children.
- James RobertsonJames Robertson (psychoanalyst)James Robertson was a psychiatric social worker and psychoanalyst based at the Tavistock Clinic and Institute, London from 1948 until 1976.' was a remarkable person who achieved great things...
(in 1952) in making the documentary film A Two-Year Old Goes to the Hospital, which was one of the films about ”young children in brief separation“. The documentary illustrated the impact of loss and suffering experienced by young children separated from their primary caretakers. This film was instrumental in a campaign to alter hospital restrictions on visiting by parents. In 1952 when he and Robertson presented their film A Two Year Old Goes to Hospital to the British Psychoanalytical SocietyBritish Psychoanalytical SocietyThe British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by the British psychiatrist Ernest Jones as the London Psychoanalytical Society on October 30, 1913....
, psychoanalysts did not accept that a child would mourn or experience grief on separation but instead saw the child's distress as caused by elements of unconscious fantasies (in the film because the mother was pregnant).
- Melanie KleinMelanie KleinMelanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...
during his psychoanalytic training. She was his supervisor; however they had different views about the role of the mother in the treatment of a three-year-old boy. Specifically and importantly, Klein stressed the role of the child's fantasies about his mother, but Bowlby emphasized the actual history of the relationship. Bowlby's views—that children were responding to real life events and not unconscious fantasies—were rejected by psychoanalysts, and Bowlby was effectively ostracized by the psychoanalytic community. He later expressed the view that his interest in real-life experiences and situations was "alien to the Kleinian outlook".
Maternal deprivation
In 1949, Bowlby's earlier work on delinquent and affectionless children and the effects of hospitalised and institutionalised care lead to his being commissioned to write the World Health OrganizationWorld Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
's report on the mental health of homeless children in post-war Europe. The result was Maternal Care and Mental Health published in 1951.
Bowlby drew together such limited empirical evidence as existed at the time from across Europe and the USA. His main conclusions, that “the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his mother (or permanent mother substitute) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment” and that not to do so may have significant and irreversible mental health consequences, were both controversial and influential. The 1951 WHO publication was highly influential in causing widespread changes in the practices and prevalence of institutional care for infants and children, and in changing practices relating to the visiting of infants and small children in hospitals by parents. The theoretical basis was controversial in many ways. He broke with psychoanalytic theories which saw infants' internal life as being determined by fantasy rather than real life events. Some critics profoundly disagreed with the necessity for maternal (or equivalent) love in order to function normally, or that the formation of an ongoing relationship with a child was an important part of parenting. Others questioned the extent to which his hypothesis
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
was supported by the evidence. There was criticism of the confusion of the effects of privation (no primary attachment figure) and deprivation (loss of the primary attachment figure) and in particular, a failure to distinguish between the effects of the lack of a primary attachment figure and the other forms of deprivation and understimulation that may affect children in institutions.
The monograph was also used for political purposes to claim any separation from the mother was deleterious in order to discourage women from working and leaving their children in daycare by governments concerned about maximising employment for returned and returning servicemen. In 1962 WHO published Deprivation of maternal care: A Reassessment of its Effects to which Mary Ainsworth, Bowlby's close colleague, contributed with his approval, to present the recent research and developments and to address misapprehensions. This publication also attempted to address the previous lack of evidence on the effects of paternal deprivation.
According to Rutter
Michael Rutter
For the motorcycle racer, see Michael Rutter Sir Michael L. Rutter is the first consultant of child psychiatry in the United Kingdom. He has been described as the "father of child psychology"...
the importance of Bowlby's initial writings on 'maternal deprivation' lay in his emphasis that children's experiences of interpersonal relationships were crucial to their psychological development.
Development of attachment theory
Bowlby himself explained in his 1988 work "A Secure Base" that the data were not, at the time of the publication of Maternal Care and Mental Health, "accommodated by any theory then current and in the brief time of my employment by the World Health Organization there was no possibility of developing a new one". He then went on to describe the subsequent development of attachment theory. Because he was dissatisfied with traditional theories, Bowlby sought new understanding from such fields as evolutionary biology, ethology, developmental psychology, cognitive science and control systems theory and drew upon them to formulate the innovative proposition that the mechanisms underlying an infants tie emerged as a result of evolutionary pressure. "Bowlby realised that he had to develop a new theory of motivation and behaviour control, built on up-to-date science rather than the outdated psychic energy model espoused by Freud." Bowlby expressed himself as having made good the "deficiencies of the data and the lack of theory to link alleged cause and effect" in Maternal Care and Mental Health in his later work Attachment and Loss published in 1969.Ethology and evolutionary concepts
"From the 1950s Bowlby was in personal and scientific contact with leading European scientists in the field of ethologyEthology
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a sub-topic of zoology....
, namely Niko Tinbergen
Nikolaas Tinbergen
Nikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen was a Dutch ethologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns in animals.In the 1960s he...
, Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch...
, and especially the rising star of ethology Robert Hinde
Robert Hinde
Robert Aubrey Hinde CBE FRS FBA is the Emeritus Royal Society Research Professor of Zoology at the University of Cambridge. He was formerly the master of St. John's College, Cambridge. He is the chair of British Pugwash...
. Using the viewpoints of this emerging science and reading extensively in the ethology literature, Bowlby developed new explanatory hypotheses for what is now known as human attachment behaviour. In particular, on the basis of ethological evidence he was able to reject the dominant Cupboard Love
Cupboard Love
"Cupboard love" is an English phrase referring to affection that is given purely to gain a reward.The term derives from the way in which a cat will give a cupboard containing its food superficial "love" when it wants to be fed...
theory of attachment prevailing in psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
and learning theory
Learning theory (education)
In psychology and education, learning is commonly defined as a process that brings together cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences and experiences for acquiring, enhancing, or making changes in one's knowledge, skills, values, and world views . Learning as a process focuses on what...
of the 1940s and 1950s. He also introduced the concepts of environmentally stable or labile human behaviour allowing for the revolutionary combination of the idea of a species-specific genetic bias to become attached and the concept of individual differences in attachment security as environmentally labile strategies for adaptation to a specific childrearing niche. Alternatively, Bowlby’s thinking about the nature and function of the caregiver-child relationship influenced ethological research, and inspired students of animal behaviour such as Tinbergen, Hinde, and Harry Harlow
Harry Harlow
Harry Frederick Harlow was an American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which demonstrated the importance of care-giving and companionship in social and cognitive development...
. Bowlby spurred Hinde to start his ground breaking work on attachment and separation in primates (monkeys and humans), and in general emphasized the importance of evolutionary thinking about human development that foreshadowed the new interdisciplinary approach of evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
. Obviously, the encounter of ethology and attachment theory
Attachment theory
Attachment theory describes the dynamics of long-term relationships between humans. Its most important tenet is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally. Attachment theory is an interdisciplinary study...
led to a genuine cross-fertilization" (Van der Horst, Van der Veer & Van IJzendoorn, 2007, p. 321).
The "Attachment and Loss" trilogy
Before the publication of the trilogy in 1969, 1972 and 1980, the main tenets of attachment theory, building on concepts from ethology and developmental psychology, were presented to the British Psychoanalytical Society in London in three now classic papers: The Nature of the Child’s Tie to His Mother (1958), Separation Anxiety (1959), and Grief and Mourning in Infancy and Early Childhood (1960). Bowlby rejected psychoanalyst explanations for attachment, and in return, psychoanalysts rejected his theory. At about the same time, Bowlby's former colleague, Mary Ainsworth was completing extensive observational studies on the nature of infant attachments in Uganda with Bowlby's ethological theories in mind. Her results in this and other studies contributed greatly to the subsequent evidence base of attachment theory as presented in 1969 in Attachment the first volume of the Attachment and Loss trilogy. The second and third volumes, Separation: Anxiety and Anger and Loss: Sadness and Depression followed in 1972 and 1980 respectively. Attachment was revised in 1982 to incorporate recent research.According to attachment theory, attachment in infants is primarily a process of proximity seeking to an identified attachment figure in situations of perceived distress or alarm for the purpose of survival. Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with the infant, and who remain as consistent caregivers for some months during the period from about 6 months to two years of age. Parental responses lead to the development of patterns of attachment which in turn lead to 'internal working models' which will guide the individual's feelings, thoughts, and expectations in later relationships. In Bowlby's approach, the human infant is considered to have a need for a secure relationship with adult caregivers, without which normal social and emotional development will not occur.
As the toddler grows, it uses its attachment figure or figures as a "secure base" from which to explore. Mary Ainsworth
Mary Ainsworth
Mary Dinsmore Salter Ainsworth was a Canadian developmental psychologist known for her work in early emotional attachment with "The Strange Situation" as well as her work in the development of Attachment Theory.-Life:...
used this feature plus "stranger wariness" and reunion behaviours, other features of attachment behaviour, to develop a research tool called the "Strange Situation Procedure" for developing and classifying different attachment styles.
The attachment process is not gender specific as infants will form attachments to any consistent caregiver who is sensitive and responsive in social interactions with the infant. The quality of the social engagement appears to be more influential than amount of time spent.
Darwin biography
Bowlby's last work, published posthumously, is a biography of Charles DarwinCharles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
,
which discusses Darwin's "mysterious illness" and whether it was psychosomatic.
Bowlby's legacy
Although not without its critics, attachment theory has been described as the dominant approach to understanding early social development and to have given rise to a great surge of empirical research into the formation of children's close relationships. As it is presently formulated and used for research purposes, Bowlby's attachment theory stresses the following important tenets:- Children between 6 and about 30 months are very likely to form emotional attachments to familiar caregivers, especially if the adults are sensitive and responsive to child communications.
- The emotional attachments of young children are shown behaviourally in their preferences for particular familiar people, their tendency to seek proximity to those people, especially in times of distress, and their ability to use the familiar adults as a secure base from which to explore the environment.
- The formation of emotional attachments contributes to the foundation of later emotional and personality development, and the type of behaviour toward familiar adults shown by toddlers has some continuity with the social behaviours they will show later in life.
- Events that interfere with attachment, such as abrupt separation of the toddler from familiar people or the significant inability of carers to be sensitive, responsive or consistent in their interactions, have short-term and possible long-term negative impacts on the child's emotional and cognitive life.
See also
- Attachment disorderAttachment disorderAttachment disorder is a broad term intended to describe disorders of mood, behavior, and social relationships arising from a failure to form normal attachments to primary care giving figures in early childhood, resulting in problematic social expectations and behaviors...
- Attachment in childrenAttachment in childrenNewborn humans infants cannot survive without a caregiver to provide food and protection, and will not thrive without other types of support as well. While infants have relatively few inborn behaviors—such as crying, rooting, and sucking—they also come with many behavioral systems ready to be...
- Attachment theoryAttachment theoryAttachment theory describes the dynamics of long-term relationships between humans. Its most important tenet is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally. Attachment theory is an interdisciplinary study...
- Attachment-based therapy (children)Attachment-based therapy (children)Attachment-based therapy is a phrase intended to apply to interventions or approaches based on attachment theory, originated by John Bowlby. These range from individual therapeutic approaches to public health programs to interventions specifically designed for foster carers...
- Attachment therapyAttachment TherapyAttachment therapy is the most commonly used term for a controversial category of alternative child mental health interventions intended to treat attachment disorders. The term generally includes accompanying parenting techniques...
- Reactive attachment disorderReactive attachment disorderReactive attachment disorder is described in clinical literature as a severe and relatively uncommon disorder that can affect children. RAD is characterized by markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate ways of relating socially in most contexts...
- Maternal deprivationMaternal deprivationThe term maternal deprivation is a catch-phrase summarising the early work of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, John Bowlby on the effects of separating infants and young children from their mother although the effect of loss of the mother on the developing child had been considered earlier by Freud...
- Trauma model of mental disordersTrauma model of mental disordersTrauma models of mental disorders emphasize the effects of psychological trauma, particularly in early development, as the key causal factor in the development of some or many psychiatric disorders .Trauma models are typically founded on the view that traumatic experiences...
External links
- Summaries and links to full-text or articles and books by John Bowlby
- John Bowlby: Attachment Theory Across Generations 4-minute clip from a documentary film used primarily in higher education.
- John Bowlby - Rediscovering a systems scientist A research report by the International Society for the Systems SciencesInternational Society for the Systems SciencesThe International Society for the Systems Sciences is a world-wide organization for systems sciences.- Overview :The initial purpose of the society was "to encourage the development of theoretical systems which are applicable to more than one of the traditional departments of knowledge."The idea...
authored by Gary MetcalfGary MetcalfGary S. Metcalf is an American organizational theorist, management consultant, and faculty member in the Organizational Systems concentration at Saybrook Graduate School.- Biography :...
in 2010