A View from Attachment Theory and Research

Dr. Peter Fonagy presented data from a longitudinal research investigation that he and his colleagues are carrying out at University College, London and the Anna Freud Centre. Although grounded in the fundamental assumptions and questions of psychoanalytic theory, this study relies upon the basic methods of attachment research. As such, it is the first large scale study of mother-infant attachment undertaken by a psychoanalytically oriented research group. From a historical perspective, this fact alone is interesting. Attachment theory and research emerged directly from the works of John Bowlby, an eminent psychoanalyst (Bowlby, 1969, 1982). He was joined in his work by Mary Ainsworth, an academic developmental psychologist. However, as a function of Bowlby's abandonment of drive theory, as well as his breach with the British Psychoanalytic Society, his and Ainsworth's contributions have received little attention from mainstream psychoanalysis. This despite the fact that their work and that of their colleagues has had an enormous impact upon developmental psychologists' understanding of the early mother-infant relationship (Slade and Aber, 1992; Karen, 1994). Fonagy's work represents an important step in forging links between these two domains of inquiry. In her original longitudinal research, Ainsworth (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall, 1978) was able to empirically document a relationship well accepted in psychoanalysis: that maternal emotional