Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis.: Peter Fonagy. New York:  Other Press. 2001a. Pp.  190.

Until quite recently, it was entirely possible for a psychoanalytic candidate to graduate from an IPA accredited psychoanalytic institute without having read a word of attachment theory. The work of John Bowlby might have been mentioned in passing, but ordinarily such allusions were sprinkled with caveats that Bowlby was not truly psychoanalytic in that he was more interested in the external environment of the child than the internal world. In some cases the references to Bowlby might also have been interspersed with ad hoc criticisms about his cantankerous or curmudgeonly nature. Gossip about his clashes with the establishment figures in the British Society and his disillusionment with psychoanalysis might have accompanied such aspersions.

Times have changed. Today it would be highly unlikely for any freshly minted psychoanalyst to have passed through the rigours of psychoanalytic education without some exposure to attachment theory. Peter Fonagy deserves a substantial portion of the credit for this sea change in attitude. Through his prodigious output of publications and presentations, he has convinced the psychoanalytic world that an attachment perspective may bring clinically useful thinking to the psychoanalytic enterprise. Moreover, he has demonstrated that new avenues of empirical research are available if we adopt some of the concepts inherent in attachment theory.

In this slim new volume, Fonagy has succinctly summarised much of his own and others’ work in this area. One chapter concisely surveys the key findings of attachment research. Even more impressive, the author, in a pluralistic tour de force, examines each of the major schools of psychoanalytic thought from the standpoint of how they interface with attachment theory. While many would divide up the psychoanalytic universe somewhat differently than Fonagy, Fonagy himself manages to be comprehensive in his review and avoids the parochialism endemic