ABSTRACT
The split between attachment theory and metapsychology has undoubtedly proved very costly for author's respective approaches to theoretical-clinical modelling in the field of child psychopathology over the last few decades. The concept of drive is derived, of course, from Sigmund Freud's drive theory, whilst the concept of attachment is derived from John Bowlby's attachment theory. Bowlby was attacked and condemned by psychoanalysts for many years, although he remained a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society until his death, and the concept of "attachment drive" may therefore seem provocative and may be seen as an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable in a fallacious pseudo-consensual perspective. It probably is possible, on the other hand, to talk about an attachment drive in the sense of a global self-preservation drive secondarily libidinised within an early interactive system, and this enables to continue to refer to the theory of anaclisis.
