In this blog entry today I have decided today to look quite a bit into the extensive and influential life of John Bowlby; an interesting man who was influential even to Freud. Bowlby was a British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who became famous with research that was related to child development and because of his creation of an attachment theory. Bowlby studied psychology and pre-clinical sciences at Trinity College in Cambridge where he performed outstanding as a student. After Trinity Bowlby worked with maladjusted and delinquent children and enrolled at University College Hospital in London and at the age of 26 even had professional qualifications in medicine. While Bowlby was in med school he enrolled himself at the Institute for Psychoanalysis. After medical school Bowlby trained for adult psychiatry at Maudsley Hospital and in 1937 he was actually a qualified psychoanalyst. During World War 2 Bowlby was also a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps and after the war he became a Deputy Director of the Tavistock Clinic and then later a Mental Health Consultant to the World Health Organization. Bowlby was interested in the development of children and so he began working at the Child Guidance Clinic in London. Bowlby was interested from the start of his career in troubles related to the situation of separation and he also was interested in the wartime work of Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham, which means he was interested in their work on evacuees. Bowlby was also interested in the research by Rene Spitz on orphans. By the late 1950's Bowlby had gathered enough observational and theoretical work to indicate the essential importance for human development of attachment from birth. Bowlby was curious of finding out the actual patterns of family interaction that occurs in both healthy and pathological development. Bowlby examined how attachment difficulties were sent down from one generation to another. In Bowlby's development of attachment theory Bowlby talks of the idea that attachment behavior was essentially an evolutionary life strategy for protecting the infant from predators. Bowlby had some views that children were interestingly responding to real life events and not unconscious fantasies, but this perspective was not liked by the psychoanalyst community. Later on in Bowlby's career he expressed the perspective that his interest in real life experiences and situations was foreign to the Kleininan outlook founded by Melanie Klein. In 1949, Bowlby wrote the World Health Organizations report on the mental health of homeless children in post war, because of his related research experience in this area. Bowlby's overall analysis was that "the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with their mother (or permanent mother substitute in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment". Bowlby's World Health Report was helpful in causing widespread changes in the practices and prevalence of institutional aid for infants and children and also in the changing of ways related to parents visiting small children and infants in hospitals. However Bowlby's theoretical basis in his health report was controversial in a variety of ways. As Bowlby had came away from psychoanalytic theories that viewed an infant's internal life as being determined by fantasy instead of real life events. At a certain point the health report was actually used by some for political reasons to influence women in not working and leaving their children in daycare by governments that were interested in increasing employment for returning servicemen. In 1962, the World Health Organization published "Deprivation of Maternal care: A Reassessment of its Effects", to which Mary Ainsworth who was Bowlby's close colleague contributed on. This publication by Ainsworth and Bowlby was also written to look at the situation of the previous lack of evidence on the effects of paternal deprivation. In Bowlby's research it was apparent that he was dissatisfied with traditional theories and was looking for new understanding from such fields as evolutionary biology, ethology, developmental psychology, cognitive science and control systems theory and he drew from them to try and develop the innovative notion that the mechanisms that influence an infant emerge as an influence of evolutionary pressure. Bowlby felt a need to develop a new theory of motivation and behavior control based on up-to-date science rather then Freud's espoused older psychic energy model. From the 1950's Bowlby was in personal and scientific contact with European Scientists at the forefront of ethology, like Robert Hinde and Konrad Lorenz. From studying ethology Bowlby was really able to develop a new explanatory hypotheses for what is now known as human attachment behavior. Bowlby was able through the basis of ethological evidence to reject the dominate Cupboard Love Theory of Attachment that was existing in psychoanalysis and learning theory in the 1940's and 50's. "Bowlby also helped bring about the notions 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". Interestingly to me also Bowlby's thinking about the nature and function of the caregiver-child relationship influenced ethological research and inspired students of animal behavior, like Harry Harlow. "Bowlby helped influence animal behavior researcher Hinde to start his important work on separation in primates and in general the emphasis of the importance of evolutionary thinking about human development that foreshadowed the new interdisciplinary approach known as evolutionary psychology". Before the publication of the trilogy in 1969, 1972 and 1980 the central principles of attachment theory building on concepts from ethology and development psychology were shown to the British Psychoanalytical in three different 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 denied psychoanalysts explanations for attachment and from this psychanalysts were not acceptant of Bowlby's theory. Bowlby's former colleague Mary Ainsworth completed thorough observational studies on the nature of infants attachments in Uganda as she kept Bowlby's Ethological perspectives in her own outlooks. This research of Ainsworth and others studies helped significantly to the subsequent evidence base of attachment theory as shown in 1969 through the first Volume of the "Attachment and Loss Trilogy". Attachment theory follows the belief that attachment in infants is essentially a process of proximity searching to a recognized attachment figure in circumstances of a perceived worry for the reason of survival. "Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with the infant, and who remain as regular caregivers for some months from around 6 months to two years of age". "Parental response influences the development of patterns of attachment, which then influence 'internal working models' which will shape and influence the individual's feelings, thoughts and expectations in later relationships". In Bowlby's notions of attachment, the human infant is thought to have a need for a secure relationship with adult caregivers, without that regular social and emotional progress will not take place. "As the toddler develops, it uses its attachment figure or figures as a secure beginning or base from which to explore". Interestingly to me Mary Ainsworth partly applies a feature called "stranger wariness" to help develop a research tool called the "Stranger Situation Procedure", so to develop and classify different attachment styles. "The attachment process is not specified to gender, as infants will develop attachments to any consistent caregiver who is sensitive and responsive in social interactions with the infant". "The quality of the social connection seems to be more significant than amount of time spent." Attachment theory has been talked of as the top approach to understanding early social development and to have helped rise a great influence of empirical research into the creation of children's close relationships. "As it is currently established and applied for research purposes, Bowlby's attachment theory emphasizes the following important principles": "1) 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. 2) The emotional attachments of young children are shown behaviorally 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. 3) The formation of emotional attachments contributes to the foundation of later emotional and personality development, and the type of behavior toward familiar adults shown by toddlers has some continuity with the social behaviors they will show later in life. 4) 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". Well this had definitely been a long and interesting blog post for me as I don't recall ever yet researching a individual in the field of psychology who went so in depth into the important psychological factors of how attachment operates.