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John Bowlby (1907 - 1990) was a British developmental psychologist in the psychoanalytic tradition, notable for his pioneering work in attachment theory.

Background

John Bowlby was born in 1907 in London to an upper-middle-class family. He was the fourth of six children and was raised by a nanny in traditional British fashion of his class. His father, Sir Anthony Bowlby, second Baronet Bowlby, was a surgeon with a tragic history; at age five, his own father (John's grandfather) had been killed while serving as a war correspondent in the Anglo-Chinese Opium War. Normally, John saw his mother only one hour a day after teatime. During the summer she was more available. She thought that spoiling her children was dangerous, so that attention and affection was the opposite of what was required. When Bowlby was almost four years old, his beloved nanny, who was his primary caretaker, 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. His later work, for example Separation: Anxiety and Anger, revealed that he regarded it as a terrible time for him. Because of such experiences as a child, he displayed an unusual sensitivity to children’s suffering throughout his life.

He died at the age of 83 in 1990. He had four children, including Sir Richard Bowlby, afterwards fourth Baronet Bowlby.

Career

John Bowlby’s intellectual career began at the University of Cambridge where he studied psychology and pre-clinical sciences. He won prizes for outstanding intellectual performance. After Cambridge he took some time to work 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 also found time to enroll himself in the Institute for Psychoanalysis. Following medical school, he trained in adult psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital. In 1937, he qualified as a psychoanalyst. Because of his former work with maladapted and delinquent children, he became interested in the development of children and began work at the Child Guidance Clinic in London.

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. 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 Robertson (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.

• Melanie Klein 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.

The most famous and enduring work of John Bowlby was theorizing about attachment styles of infants with primary caretakers. He observed and generalized from his observations, and hence developed a scientific theory (attachment theory). In his view, attachment behavior was an evolutionary survival strategy for protecting the infant from predators, and attachment theory reflects that. Mary Ainsworth, a student of Bowlby’s, further extended and tested his ideas.

Legacy

Attachment theory is highly regarded as a well-researched explanation of infant and toddler behavior and in the field of infant mental health. It is hard to imagine any clinical work with an infant or toddler that is not about attachment, since dealing with that issue has been shown to be an essential developmental task for that age period. For older children, attachment theory‘s clinical application is more indirect. Many if not most contemporary clinicians treating troubled children and families are informed by attachment theory but deal with attachment as an emergent property in family relationships, one that needs monitoring, counseling and instruction (primarily for parents) rather than therapy. Relatively few clinicians have tried to treat presenting attachment problems or issues as if they are symptomatic of a mental disorder of the child (such as ”reactive attachment disorder,“ which is generally deemed to be very uncommon).

Following Bowlby‘s leads, a few established child-development researchers suggested developmentally appropriate mental health interventions to sensitively foster emotional relationships between young children and adults. These approaches used tested techniques which were not only congruent with attachment theory, but with other established principles of child development. Among such researchers contemporarily are Alicia Lieberman (parent education), Stanley Greenspan (”Floor Time“), Mary Dozier (autonomous states of mind), Robert Marvin (”Circle of Security“), Daniel Schechter (intergenerational communication of trauma), and Joy Osofsky (”Safe Start Initiative“).

A small number of clinicians presented proprietary interventions for sundry mental-health issues of children, often focusing on attachment. These approaches often used unresearched or under-researched techniques and ignored the cognitive element that Bowlby recognized as essential, especially for older children. As a consequence, the interventions generated little enthusiasm among researchers familiar with Bowlby‘s theories. Controversy also dogged these interventions because of their lack of congruence with established child-development principles, difficulties with accurate assessment of attachment, use of unsubstantiated diagnoses, and weak scientific evidence. Some developers of these proprietary interventions made particularly strong statements about their evidentiary bases but did not publish either Level I material or well-designed Level II material to support their claims, providing only weak Level II evidence without replication from any independent source. (see attachment disorder)

See also

Attachment theory

Reactive attachment disorder

Attachment disorder

Selected Bibliography

• Bowlby, J. (1969,1982) Attachment . London: Hogarth Press; New York, Basic Books; Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin (1971). ISBN 0465005438.
• Bowlby, J. (1973) Separation: Anxiety & Anger . London: Hogarth Press; New York: Basic Books; Harmondsworth: Penguin (1975). ISBN 0465097162.
• Bowlby, J. (1980) Loss: Sadness & Depression . London: Hogarth Press; New York: Basic Books; Harmondsworth: Penguin (1981). ISBN 0465042376.
• Bowlby, J. (1988) A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. London: Routledge; New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0415006406.
• Bretherton, I. (1992) "The origins of attachment theory". Developmental Psychology, 28:759-775.
• Greenspan, S. (1993) Infancy and Early Childhood. Madison, CT: International Universities Press. ISBN 0823626334.
• Holmes, J. (1993) John Bowlby and Attachment Theory. London: Routledge. ISBN 041507729X.
• Siegler R., DeLoache, J. & Eisenberg, N. (2003) How Children develop. New York: Worth. ISBN 1572592494.

• 1907 births
• 1990 deaths
• British psychologists