ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the evidence bearing on a possible relationship between early separation anxiety and adult agoraphobia. The central concern of children with separation anxiety is easy access to the mother or home. The situations that are viewed as interfering with reaching the mother differ in type and in intensity from child to child, and the specific behavioral consequences of pathological separation anxiety vary with age. However, in examining the relationship between childhood separation anxiety and adult agoraphobia, diagnostic imprecision in either condition should weaken their association. The hypothesized relationship between childhood separation anxiety and adult agoraphobia leads to the expectation that an increase of the childhood condition should be present in the children of agoraphobic parents, as compared to children whose parents are not agoraphobes. The possible link between separation anxiety, early during development, and a specific adult anxiety disorder is an important clinical hypothesis.
