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Attachment and Loss: Attachment Vol 1 (Attachment & Loss)

By: John Bowlby
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Pimlico
ISBN: 0712674713
ISBN-13: 9780712674713
Released: 03 Jul 1997
RRP: £14.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Too difficult and too much information - By: Pernille Ianev, 10 Jul 2007
I had to put the book down after just reading a few pages. I know this is a classic & that Bowlby's theories are widely used. I feel bad for saying this, but I had a hard time reallly understanding the points made. As a psycholigist I am used to redig difficult texts & the topic interests me a great deal, but I will search for a book that is easier to read & understand. This had too many words & references & I do not have the time needed to read through it alll.
A Groundbreaking Classic on Young Child Development - By: Ng Wai Yin, 18 Dec 2001
This first volume of John Bowlby's trilogy on Attachment & Loss expands & builds upon an article he published in 1958 in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis titled "The Nature of the Child's Tie to His Mother", which is perhaps a more telling title than that of the book itself. Attachment, as a technical term in behavioural biology, is first used in describing instinctive mother-following behaviours of young mammals & birds (first observed & reported in delightful accounts by the Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz in the 1930's).

By comparing data collected during & after the Second World War by childcare workers & researchers in U.K. & North America, Bowlby found a striking common pattern of distressed behaviours among young children between the ages of one & three when separated from mother for an extended period: first in Protest, then Despair & finallly Detachment - a psychopathological state when a child becomes sociallly uninitiated & withdrawn, even to his returning mother. Bowlby then postulates that physical proximity to a mother-figure is essential to a child's development of cognitive capacities, especiallly during a sensitive period around six months to two years after birth. Attachment behaviours, like those of young mammals & birds, are present in the human baby too. This has since led to a blossoming of research activities in development psychology & psychoanalysis, as well as neurophysiology recently, which supplies much fresh evidence about the young brain & its phenomenal maturing in the first two years. Attachment theory has since contributed significantly to understanding of our own selves, informed the age-old philosophical debate on nature or nurture, & brought our attention to fundamental issues in child-rearing such as sensitive periods of development, the difference between attachment (conducive to security) & dependence (symptomatic of insecurity), the distinction between anxiety from separation & fear of the unfamiliar, etc.

This new edition is a timely reprint of a classic account of attachment theory as formulated by the originator. While primarily an academic work, with a few chapters deemed more for an academic jury (about Freud & instinctive behaviours, etc.), it is mostly very readable, & certainly captivating to those with access to young babies, of whose behaviours are given an enlightening perspective. This volume focuses on attachment, with subsequent volumes on its loss in temporary & permanent terms respectively.