John Bowlby

John Bowlby

John Bowlby graduated in 1929 from the University of Cambridge and undertook training ate the British Psychoanalytic Institute. At the time, Melanie Klein was the major influence and even though Bowlby acknowledged it's emphasis on early relationships and the pathogenic potencial of loss, he didn't agree that cildren's emotional problemas are pretty much due to fantasies generated from interanl conflict between agressive and libidinal drives.

In fact, Bowlby had already become interested in intergenerational transmission of attachment and in the possiblity of helping the children by helping their parents.

Bowlby's first empirical study dates from 1940 and was reviewed in 1944: Forty-four juvenile thieves:their characters and home lives, in which through detailed examination of these cases he was able to establish a link between their symptoms and histories of separation and maternal deprivation.

After WW II, Bowlby became the head of the Children's Department at the Tavistock Clinic, which he then renamed the Department for Children and Parents. Even so, he decided to found his own research unit focused on mother-child separation (this was an undeniable event and it was easier to study than more subtle influences of interaction.).