John Bowlby

John Bowlby (born February 26, 1907, London, England—died September 2, 1990, Isle of Skye, Scotland) British developmental psychologist and psychiatrist best known as the originator of attachment theory, which posits an innate need in very young children to develop a close emotional bond with a caregiver. Bowlby explored the behavioral and psychological consequences of both strong and weak emotional bonds between mothers and their young children.

Bowlby grew up in an upper-middle-class family in London. His father, a leading surgeon, was often absent. He was cared for primarily by a nanny and nursemaids and did not spend much time with his mother, as was the custom at that time among his class.

In 1918, he and his brother were sent to Lindisfarne, a boarding school. In 1921 he entered the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, where he trained to be a naval officer. He eventually decided to study medicine at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he enrolled in 1925. After two years he changed his focus to psychology, and he graduated in 1928.

After graduating, Bowlby then spent a year as a volunteer teacher at two schools for children with behavioral difficulties, Bedales and Priory Gate. About 1929, Bowlby entered University College Hospital, London, and while in attendance there, he enrolled in the British Psychoanalytic Institute. He started training in adult psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital in London after his 1933 medical qualification. From 1937 to 1940, Bowlby worked as a psychiatrist at the London Child Guidance Clinic, a school for maladjusted children. The school viewed the children’s problems as stemming from past adverse experiences in their families, an approach that struck a chord with Bowlby. In 1946, he joined the staff of the Tavistock Institute in London, where he established a research unit to examine the effects on young children of separation from their primary caregivers. It was at Tavistock that he developed attachment theory, one tenet of which is that very young children who fail to develop close emotional bonds with a caregiver will experience behavioral problems in later life.

One of Bowlby’s coworkers at the clinic was Mary Salter Ainsworth, a Canadian American developmental psychologist who explored and expanded attachment theory through her research. She developed a widely used research instrument (called the Strange Situation) for studying children’s attachment to their mothers under laboratory conditions.

A high point of Bowlby’s career and one that spread his ideas worldwide was his 1951 report, at the invitation of the World Health Organization (WHO), on the mental health of homeless children. Translated into 14 languages, his report highlighted the importance of constant loving care by a mother figure for a young child’s healthy development. Bowlby laid out his more fully developed theory in his well-known three-volume work Attachment and Loss (1969–80).