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The War Inside and The Nature and Nurture of Love both begin from the same point: by noting that psychoanalysis - and in particular psychoanalytic research with children - played a key role during the mid-twentieth century in shaping our understanding of the emotions, family relationships and the nature of the self in a democratic society. Both books argue that in the years following World War II, psychoanalytic thinking was central to debates about what children need to develop into emotionally healthy individuals and ‘good’ citizens; and both books give detailed accounts of the nature of this influence, and the way in which it permeated popular culture and government policy - in particular, the central significance given by postwar psychoanalysts to the role of the mother-child relationship.
From this shared starting point, however, the two books diverge. Marga Vicedo's The Nature and Nurture of Love tells the story of how this influence played out in Cold War America, and focuses specifically on the role of John Bowlby and attachment theory. Vicedo's work is a polemical one, arguing that Bowlby's work tried to frame mother love as a ‘biological instinct’, and in doing so supported a conservative social agenda of mother-blaming and the maintenance (or re-establishment) of traditional gender roles - ones in which the mother's place was (by nature) in the home, looking after the children.
This critique of Bowlby's influence is not a new one, but Vicedo's aim is to challenge Bowlby's ideas by showing how the scientific bases for his theories were flawed. In a series of closely argued chapters, she shows how the ethological work of Konrad Lorenz, on whom Bowlby relied to support