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This excellent collection of papers, presented by the staff of the Tavistock Clinic and the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, shows the width of interest and developing foci in their research. The value of multi-disciplinary teamwork, where there is an agreed conceptual basis, is shown, in which the testing and applications can then be made in a variety of different situations. The central theme is that of attachment behaviour and the development of autonomy. Factors which may impede or facilitate such developments are examined, not only in childhood, but in marriage, the family, at work and also in hospitals and institutions, caring for the chronically disabled, and those in terminal illness.
It is Bowlby's theoretical concepts on attachment which are shared, and these he expresses concisely in his paper on self reliance. He feels that human beings at every period of their life function best when they feel that they have some kind of secure base provided by trusted figures to whom they can turn in difficulty and stress. In health, mutually rewarding relationships are formed with such figures, and there can be some exchange of rôles, with first one and then the other providing the necessary support and security from which the other can operate. The first year of life is shown to be of vital importance in the development of healthy self-reliance which is recognizable at the end of that time. This is linked with a capacity to trust others, and to recognize where help can be found from an attachment figure. For this potential to emerge, it is essential that the child should have received mothering which is sensitive, responsive, accessible and accepting. Impaired functioning of autonomy leads to anxious clinging, or aloofness, detachment and defiant independence. Separation anxiety as a reaction to the potential danger of being alone, has survival value, and is protective. Threats of separation or loss used by parents as sanctions for good behaviour from their chi