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Attachment theory is to the world of developmental psychology, like vanilla is to the world of confection. Attachment flavours how we as humans, through our early relationships with caregivers, navigate relational and emotional experiences in our journey of life. Its popularity as a theory led to its incorporation into various fields of research and practice, sometimes with unfortunate dilution and alterations. The Psychology of Attachment provides novices and experts with a concise and accurate outline of the original conceptualisations, as well as the most important developments of the theory. The authors demystify attachment theory by repackaging the ideas of its most influential contributors, and critically examining their claims with the rigour of effect sizes of modern meta-analytic studies. The book forms part of a series of titles that aim to bring important topics in psychology to readers who are not psychologists yet offer psychologists and researchers food for contemplation.
The book takes the reader to the genesis of attachment theory, by introducing the four main sources of influence on its founder, John Bowlby. They describe how contemporary theories in psychology, as well as areas in the natural sciences, stimulated key ideas in Bowlby, but also how their limitations and his criticisms of them sparked novel positions that would come to fruition in attachment theory. Particular attention is paid to attachment theory's narrow ties with evolution and ethology, which may be unfamiliar to many readers. They describe interesting narratives of Bowlby's intellectual exchanges with ethologist Robert Hinde and animal researchers Harry Harlow and Robert Zimmerman.
Attachment as a concept is often poorly defined and interchangeably used with other ideas that sound similar. In The Psychology of Attachment, the reader learns that Bowlby, in the merging of psychoanalytic and ethological ideas, contributed to some of this confusion in his use of broad as well as narrow