The Relevance of Attachment Research to Psychoanalysis and Analytic Social Psychology

In order not to lose touch with progress in other scientific areas, psychoanalysis needs to change its frame of reference — what in psychoanalytic terms, is called its metapsychology. As an alternative framework I have suggested Bowlby's attachment theory (Bacciagaluppi, 1989), which could place psychoanalysis onto a firm evolutionary basis and link it to the extensive research on child development that has been generated by attachment theory.

Bowlby's theory, in turn, developed within an alternative approach to psychoanalysis that was started in Hungary by Sandor Ferenczi and then took two directions: one in Britain, which led to the establishment of what is now known as the British Independent Group, to which Bowlby himself belonged; the other in the USA, which, through Sullivan, Fromm, and Clara Thompson, led to an alternative approach that is characterized by the importance accorded to parental love in normal infantile development, and by the re-evaluation of real-life traumatic events (separation, rejection, loss, role reversal, physical and sexual abuse) in the development of psychopathology, in contrast to Freud's rejection of the seduction theory in 1897.

Since Bowlby's original work, attachment theory has generated an enormous amount of empirical research. I hope this review is useful in providing some updating of my original suggestion. After describing the foundation of attachment theory, I shall discuss transgenerational transmission, internal working models, cross-cultural studies, and longitudinal studies. Finally, I shall discuss the relevance