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Attachment theory has experienced a complex and nonlinear relationship with psychoanalysis. With the seminal works of John Bowlby initially deemed to fall outside the scope of psychoanalytic theory and only perfunctorily useful to the consulting room, attachment theory became a standalone field of study, tenuously connected to psychoanalysis. However, as the systematic clinical attention paid to attachment phenomena mushroomed, so too did the related scientific inquiry-both of which facilitated a sense of appreciation, and even reverence, by applied psychologists, basic researchers, and neuroscientists alike. Attachment theory also began to garner a venerable status amongst many psychoanalysts, with those in analytic circles fully acknowledging both its clinical relevance and, for many, its role as a clear link with psychological science. This served to raise the academic profile of the psychoanalytic field, which had historically shunned the natural science model.
The Origins of Attachment: Infant Research and Adult Treatment (Routledge) accentuates the science-practice relationship at large, and further shores up the academic link between analytic theories and treatments. Exemplar investigators Beatrice Beebe and Frank Lachmann demonstrate the successful marriage between careful laboratory examination of attachment phenomena, adult pathology, and psychotherapy. The premise of the text successfully (and empirically) establishes the importance of earliest relational experiences to later psychological functioning by using a sophisticated experimental methodology not readily seen in clinical psychology or psychoanalysis. As such, The Origins of Attachment provides a comprehensive scientific investigation of the genesis of secure and insecure attachment styles, proactively opening up otherwise tenebrous theoretical concepts to empirical examination in ways not previously attempted.
The early stages of The Origins of Attachment