Applications of Attachment: The Integration of Developmental and Clinical Traditions

The notion that early, maladaptive parent-child relations play a causal role in psychopathology has long been central to developmental theorizing. However, it was not until John Bowlby (1969/1982, 1973, 1980) provided a broadly alluring paradigm and Mary Ainsworth (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) developed the practical means to verify it that the early relations, later psychopathology hypothesis received concerted empirical attention.