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TWO CONCEPTS ABOUT SOCIAL ADAPTATION in infancy have caught the attention of recent investigators in the field: attachment, the name given by Bowlby to a process of establishing an affective tie to the mother in the first six months, and bonding, which Klaus and Kennell have applied to the onset of attachment in the hour after birth. Both concepts specify behaviors that set conditions early in infancy for a mutually satisfying relation between mother and infant.1 I shall review some supporting data, and comment on the extent to which the ideas they contain are consonant with psychoanalytic theory and useful for learning about psychological vulnerability of infants.
Attachment theory grew out of a series of important studies by Bowlby. He found that delinquent boys had childhood histories of separation and loss that left them with "affectionless characters" (1944), carried out a comprehensive survey of the effects of maternal deprivation (1951), and with Robertson and Rosenbluth