ABSTRACT
The theme of this year's Bowlby lecture marks the movement within Attachment theory towards the integration of sexuality in its theory and clinical practice. Sexuality was not a focus of theoretical concern for Bowlby. He emphasized that attachment was a motivational system in its own right, apart from sexuality and feeding. Bowlby's post-war studies of refugee children led to the publication of his seminal work, Maternal Care and Mental Health by the World Health Organization in 1952. He also studied children in hospital and a residential nursery, in conjunction with James Robertson, who filmed them. Although Bowlby joined the British Psychoanalytic Society in the 1930s and received his training from Joan Riviere and Melanie Klein, he became increasingly sceptical of their focus on the inner fantasy life of the child rather than real life experience, and tended towards what would now be termed a relational approach.
