Britain between the Wars: The Historical Context of Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment

Abstract

As developmental psychology "comes of age," there is increasing interest in tracing the history of thought and research concerning children (Lomax, Kagan, and Rosenkrantz 1978; Sears 1975; Senn 1975). Such an enterprise offers the possibility of providing not only a descriptive chronicle of personal or anecdotal interest, but a basis for insights into how our ideas have been shaped by the cultural context in which they were developed. It is, for instance, by now commonplace to note that much of Freud's thought should be seen in the context of 19th-century Vienna, and that many of his perceptions may have been correct for the individuals he observed although they may fail as immutable observations of human behavior in general (see, e.g., Mitchell 1974). The present paper explores the cultural and historical context of another major theorist of child development, John Bowlby. The early origins of Bowlby's theory are sought in events set in train in Britain by the First World War, and occurring during the interwar period. This may surprise readers who think of Bowlby's work as beginning with the WHO Report (Bowlby 1951) and consequently as related to the Second World War, to observations by Burlingham and Freud (1942, 1944) of children separated from their families, and to Spitz's (Spitz and Wolf 1946) work on infants in foundling homes and orphanages. But formulations in the WHO report clearly appear in Bowlby's work before World War II and are also evident in the writings of Klein (1935, 1940) and Suttie (1935), who were working on themes first drawn into focus during the first World War. In a personal interview, Bowlby identified 1929 as the time when he was first struck by the importance of separation in children's lives. Thus, this paper focuses on the effect of the "Great War" on psychoanalytic thought and, more generally, on psychiatry in Britain.

John Bowlby and James Robertson: theorists, scientists and crusaders for improvements in the care of children in hospital

“…Bowlby strongly disagreed with Klein (who had at one time been his supervisor) believing that psychoanalysis must be based on Freudian concepts of the relationship between children’s experiences within their family and subsequent emotional problems in adulthood (Horowitz 1992). He also thought that psychoanalysis should be supported by strong scientific research, looking to the discipline of ethology – the study of the behaviour of animals in relation to their normal environments (Macquarie Dictionary 1983) – to provide support for his theories (Newcombe & Lerner 1982).…”

Separation and divergence: The untold story of James Robertson's and John Bowlby's theoretical dispute on mother–child separation

“…20-90). Bowlby certainly picked up the idea of a primary need for mother in this context (Newcombe & Lerner, 1982;Van der Horst, 2008 It is interesting to note that Bowlby started out in the orthodox Freudian school, picking up Klein's idea of the connectedness of childhood separation experiences and adult reactions to loss, but in his search for an explanation of that phenomenon gradually moved to the eclectic group of the Tavistock Clinic (Berrios & Freeman, 1991). Relying heavily on ethology as a new theoretical framework (Van der Horst, Van der Veer, & Van IJzendoorn, 2007) and on Harlow's separation experiments with young rhesus monkeys (Van der Horst, LeRoy, & Van der Veer, 2008), Bowlby would elaborate on the topic of maternal separation and grief and mourning in several papers in the early 1960s (Bowlby, 1960a(Bowlby, , 1960b(Bowlby, , 1961b(Bowlby, , 1961c(Bowlby, , 1961d(Bowlby, , 1963.…”

“…Ever since the formulation of his psychoanalytic theory, debates about its value and applicability in clinical practice have been commonplace. In Britain, in the period between the First and Second World Wars, the basic tenets were debated between two schools within psychoanalysis: the so-called "eclectic" psychiatrists on the one hand, and the "orthodox Freudian" psychiatrists on the other (Newcombe & Lerner, 1982). The opponents essentially differed in opinion on one major point: the role of infantile sexual trauma in personality development, as put forward by Freud in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.…”

“…His therapy consisted in encouraging the soldiers to remember and reinterpret their war experiences. The previously mentioned Suttie was the most prolific in finding eclectic alternatives for orthodox Freudian theory (Newcombe & Lerner, 1982). In his work on The Origins of Love and Hate (Suttie, 1935(Suttie, /1988, he wondered whether the "attachment-to-mother is merely the sum of the infantile bodily needs and satisfactions which refer to her [i.e., secondary drive], or whether the need for a mother is primarily presented to the child mind as a need for company and as a discomfort in isolation."…”

Before Attachment Theory: Separation Research at the Tavistock Clinic, 1948–1956

“…Others looked at the intellectual affinities and differences between Bowlby's theory and the prevailing views in post‐WWI British psychiatry. Newcombe and Lerner () examined the intellectual developments of the interwar period, highlighting the links between Bowlby's concept of attachment and the work of Melanie Klein and Ian Suttie. Van Dijken et al.…”