ABSTRACT
A previous chapter used some of John Bowlby’s ideas on the organization of the personality. He has much more to offer – he is, in fact, one of those universally well-informed men, homo universalis, whose knowledge ranges over a great variety of fields: the study of engineering, cybernetics, and computer programming; the psychology of perception and cognition; the study of animals in general and as social beings. He is also a psycho-analyst; one of his books is dedicated to the patients ‘who have worked hard to educate me’. From the riches of an intellectual store which holds all this, he has derived ideas on the nature of a person’s attachment to other people, and on what happens when people are separated, temporarily or for ever, from those to whom they have been attached. To this we now turn.
