Sigmund Freud as the Father of Attachment Theory*

Although Dr John Bowlby undertook pioneering work to champion the role of attachment and loss in the development of mental health and mental illness, perhaps more so than any other investigator, fewer and fewer contemporary practitioners have come to appreciate the extent to which his numerous contributions had emerged first and foremost from classical Freudian psychoanalysis. Indeed, in this article, the author argues that Professor Sigmund Freud had already emphasised the importance of “Bindung”—the German term for “attachment”—in many of his writings, and that Bowlby would incorporate these foundations, which he then expanded in a most impressive manner. Drawing upon his own research as a historian of psychoanalysis, and upon his personal interviews with John Bowlby during the 1980s, the author underscores that an acknowledgement of the Freudian roots of attachment theory not only represents a more accurate and scholarly approach to the field of modern psychology but, moreover, will help colleagues to appreciate that the splits which have emerged among “classical psychoanalysts”, “relational psychoanalysts”, “attachment-based psychotherapists”, and so on, represent manifestations of collegial rivalry and institutional divisiveness rather than genuine theoretical and technical disagreements. In reconfiguring Freud as the father of attachment theory, the author hopes that modern-day mental health workers will benefit from the insights of both of these genius forefathers.