Attachment and Loss represents the work of years of inquiry into the nature of a child's intimate relationship with his mother. This problem has had currency in man's imagination at least since Moses's time, or that of Romulus and Remus. With Freud's startling discoveries nearly seventy-five years ago that this powerful early relationship was also unconscious, a new era in the psychology of intimacy opened. Its effect on both scientific and intellectual thought has continued.

While Bowlby's initial frame of reference was psychoanalytic, he found that it limited him. In Attachment and Loss he has attempted to bridge the gap that he believes exists between what he considers the end-products dealt with by psychoanalysis and so-called 'primary data' consisting of the observations of infants and young children.