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The launch of the journal ATTACHMENT last year was a significant marker of Bowlby's centenary. Attachment researcher Howard Steele welcomed the Journal, saying, ‘This new journal speaks to the heart of all that John Bowlby devoted himself to … in this Centenary year, there may be no greater tribute to him than the launch of ATTACHMENT: New Directions in Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis.’
The first volume of the Journal reprinted Bowlby's groundbreaking work 44 Juvenile Thieves, alongside contemporary commentaries. Looking back over this history gives us a fresh perspective. The thinking provided by Bowlby and by attachment theory provides us with a revolutionary shift in understanding mental health and wider issues of social relations and social difficulties. In this Centenary year, it is clear that Bowlby's insights are more relevant than ever; but in historical terms they are still recent, still challenging, and still controversial. We still have a struggle ahead until the importance of attachment history and the need for secure relationship becomes integrated into society's understanding and treatment of mental distress.
In 1961 Bowlby wrote, in ‘Childhood mourning and its implications for psychiatry’,
During the past 20 years much evidence has accumulated, pointing to a causal relationship between loss of maternal care in early years and later mental disturbance. Although there are psychiatrists who still challenge this general conclusion, a more usual attitude is to accept there is probably something in it and ask for more information.
I sighed when I re-read this quote earlier this year. My own experience of the interface with psychiatric services in the UK in 2007 has made me wonder if we have gone backwards, or at least that things have not improved since Bowlby wrote this over thirty years ago.
This was really reinforced for me a few months ago, when I was visiting one of the psychiatric hospitals in an inner London borough. The ward was