ABSTRACT
Bowlby, a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist at the Tavistock Clinic in London, realised there was a need for a new paradigm to both bring psychoanalytic theory in line with contemporary researchable scientific thinking, as well as make sense of the most complex children he came across. The main influences on attachment theory, apart from psychoanalysis and psychiatry, were evolutionary theory and also ethology, the study of how animals behave in their natural contexts. Bowlby learnt that infants of many species raised without maternal care were badly scarred. He was influenced by Harlow (1965) who had found that monkeys reared in isolation displayed shocking symptoms, such as fearfulness, acting bizarrely, and an inability to interact or play. Harlow famously found that such monkeys, when given a choice between two ‘wire’ monkeys, clung to one covered in a soft terry-cloth, and ignored the hard metal ‘monkey’ holding a bottle of milk, only going to the bottle when hungry. Comfort was more important than food. Another researcher, Hinde (1970) showed that primates removed from their mothers at first protested, then later showed despair, and eventually became emotionally cut-off. These findings echoed Bowlby’s views, who argued that human infants too have a biological need for a protective attachment figure, the absence of which causes serious psychological difficulties.
