ABSTRACT
Attachment theory was first conceptualized by John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst and member of the British Psychoanalytic Society (Bowlby, 1969/ 1982, 1973, 1980, 1988). Attachment theory grew out of Bowlby’s clinical work, beginning with his observation that the delinquent boys with whom he was working had all suffered early losses or traumatic abandonments (Bowlby, 1944). Despite its inherent links to psychoanalytic theory, Bowlby’s belief that the need and predisposition to form life-sustaining attachments is what forms the core of human connectedness and his explicit rejection of drive theory led to his extrusion from the British Psychoanalytic Society and from the psychoanalytic literature as well. This regrettable chapter in psychoanalytic history today has been thoroughly reviewed by Holmes (1993, 1996), Karen (1998), and van Dijken (1996). It was not until three decades later, when first Mary Main and later Peter Fonagy began to translate the central tenets of attachment theory into concepts that were relevant to the clinical process, that psychoanalytically oriented clinicians began to consider some of the ways attachment theory might be applicable to developmental theory and clinical work (Ammaniti, 1999; Diamond & Blatt, 1994; Diamond et al., 1999; Eagle, 1995, 1997; Fonagy, 1999, 2000; Holmes, 1993, 1995, 1996; Lyons-Ruth, 1999; Slade & Aber, 1992; Slade, 1999a, 1999b, 2000).
