John Bowlby
Psychologist · 1907-1990 · Psychology, stage 3: Meet the psychologists
Argued that the infant-caregiver bond is a biological system in its own right, not a by-product of being fed.
Overview
John Bowlby was a British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who broke with psychoanalytic orthodoxy on a specific point: the prevailing view held that infants attach to whoever feeds them, and Bowlby argued instead that attachment is a distinct behavioural system shaped by natural selection, because an infant who stayed near a protector was more likely to survive. He drew on ethology, particularly Konrad Lorenz's work on imprinting, and on Harry Harlow's rhesus monkeys, which preferred a cloth surrogate that gave no food to a wire one that did. His 1951 report for the World Health Organization on children separated from their families by war and institutional care changed hospital and orphanage practice across Europe, though its strongest claims about maternal deprivation went beyond what the evidence supported and were criticised for prescribing that mothers stay home. He coined the phrase environment of evolutionary adaptedness, which later became standard vocabulary in evolutionary psychology. Start with A Secure Base, a short collection of lectures.
Where to start reading
Maternal Care and Mental Health 1951
The World Health Organization report on homeless and institutionalised children that put separation on the public agenda and changed care practice.
Attachment and Loss, Volume 1: Attachment 1969
The full theoretical statement: attachment as a control system with a biological function, argued from ethology rather than from psychoanalytic doctrine.
A Secure Base 1988
Late lectures applying attachment theory to clinical practice and parenting; the most approachable of his books.
Part of
Sources
- John Bowlby Wikipedia
- Attachment theory Wikipedia
- Evolutionary Psychology Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyCovers the adaptationist reasoning Bowlby's account depends on, and the objections to it.
