The Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience Chapter of the Argentine Psychoanalytical Association

In the last part of this year, our group has started a module dedicated to the study of an important subject within psychoanalytic theory: the formation of lasting relationships within the concept of attachment. We began with the work of Bowlby, especially that of Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1: Attachment (1968). The objective was then to relate some of the author's ideas to Panksepp's research in his book Affective Neuroscience (1998). We presented first a synthesis of Bowlby's ideas and then those of Panksepp, seeing whether we could find some connection between them for a future report.

The research that gave rise to attachment theory began in the 1950s, starting with psychoanalysis (in particular, the theory of object relations) and ethology. However, while psychoanalysis was concerned with the reconstruction of the initial stages of development of an individual, attachment theory centered on the interactive behaviour of the mother-baby dyad and the forecasting of their possible future behavior. Interest is especially focused on the multiple effects of the loss of the mother tie between the ages of 6 months and 6 years. Four characteristics of this approach are described: (1) the prospective point of view, (2) the interest centered on the pathological agents and their aftereffects, (3) direct observation, and (3) ethology.

Attachment theory emerged from the observations of children made by Dorothy Burlingham and Anna Freud during the Second World War and then by René Spitz and Katherine Wolfe in a criminal institution. In the course of the second and third years of life, it was seen that, on being separated from its mother, a child reacts in three stages, of variable time length: protest, despair, and detachment. The first can break out with some delay and last between a few hours and more than a week. The child shows signs of anxiety, frequently crying and s