You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The work reported in this paper bridges psychoanalytic theory and practice with current research methodologies in developmental psychology. A unique piece of research began in 1986 which combined a longitudinal study on ‘Intergenerational Patterns of Attachment’ with the ongoing work of the Well-Baby Clinic at the Anna Freud Centre. This study involved 100 London families expecting their first children. During the last trimester of the pregnancy, the prospective mothers and fathers were extensively interviewed concerning their childhood histories and current feelings regarding object relationships. One year later, the quality of the child-mother attachment relationship was empirically assessed and, at 18 months, the quality of the child-father relationship was similarly assessed. Independent of the empirical study, several of the families were introduced to the Well-Baby Clinic and visited on a regular basis throughout the first two years of the child's life, and beyond.
The principal aim of the study was to explore the possibility of identifying links between the current mother-child and father-child relationship and the parents’ respective representations of their own childhood history. More specifically, this paper describes the associaton