ABSTRACT
The nature of the child's bond to its mother has been of considerable interest to psychologists for many years. Although Freud (1952) articulated a position that placed extreme importance on the experiences of the infant during the first year of life, he did not develop a model of good or bad mothering as subsequent psychoanalytic theorists did (Winnicott, 1975). Nor did he place emphasis on the quality of the relationship between mother and infant. Rather, the infant was a primitive being whose needs and drives had to be met in a satisfactory manner. If the mother or another caregiver could satisfy these needs, then the infant could move through the early stages of psychosexual development to a point at which relations with one figure assumed psychological importance (Freud, 1905). John Bowlby, a trained psychoanalyst, was the first to present a coherent model of the process by which the bond between mother and infant developed and the functions that this bond served (Bowlby, 1969, 1973). He described the importance of the formation of the bond, from its immediate consequences but also from an evolutionary perspective. Bowlby's reasoning took both an ethological and evolutionary perspective. He argued that, with a long period of infancy or immaturity, it becomes necessary for the parent (mother) to protect her immature offspring from predators and danger. Once this period of immaturity ceases, the offspring have the ability to protect themselves within the confines of their environment. Because of this need for protection and the need for the offspring to survive, mother and infant develop an important symbiotic rela-
tionship in which infant's signals of distress or fear are noted by the mother, and she, in turn, offers comfort and protection, as well as a secure base from which the young learns to explore the environment. As the infant develops, the system of infant signals and maternal responses grows more complex. However, the basic function of the system remains constant: the infant signals its distress, the mother provides protection and security, and the infant seeks proximity and contact during periods of danger or distress. Bowlby (1969) viewed this goal-corrected partnership, as he called it, prototypical for future relationships with other conspecifics.
