The chapters in this edited volume grew out of papers presented at a 1993 conference in Toronto, which brought together developmental researchers and clinicians interested in attachment theory. Thus, this is not a book about psychoanalysis per se, but it provides an excellent opportunity to consider the relevance of attachment theory and research for psychoanalysis.

Attachment theory was originated in the 1950s by John Bowlby, who proposed that humans have a primary need for emotional attachment to others which is not drive based and which evolved because human infants need the protection of caretakers in order to survive. Empirical research on attachment was originated by Mary Ainsworth, in particular with her development in the 1960s of “the strange situation,” a laboratory technique for studying infants and their caregivers, together and apart, in the presence and absence of