ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a digest of Colin Murray Parkes' book Love and Loss on the subject of attachment theory. The book includes an account of Parkes' review of existing research into infants' attachment to their mothers or "mother-figures", followed by an account of his own meticulous research into the way childhood attachment carries over into adult life. His overall conclusion was of a close correlation between a child's attachment pattern and the attachment pattern that they subsequently exhibit at adults. John Bowlby undertook a review of empirical studies for the World Health Organization regarding the effects of maternal deprivation. This work established just how much harm could be inflicted on infants by a mother's absence or rejection. Ainsworth developed a systematic method of observing and classifying the patterns of attachment between infants and mothers. The depressed mother is likely to have suffered a grievous loss or trauma during the perinatal period.
