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Considering the enormous impact of the work of John Bowlby on developmental psychology and child psychiatry, how can we account for the reluctance of psychoanalysis to embrace the implications attachment theory has for understanding object relations? Suzan van Dijken's noteworthy biographical study provides a context for infering some of the reasons that underlie this “resistance.”
The author, a researcher at the Centre for Child and Family Studies at Rijks University in the Netherlands, describes her book as an “intellectual biography” (p. 7) whose focus is the origin of Bowlby's interest in the theme of separation. She recounts a pertinent anecdote concerning the extraordinary degree to which Bowlby concentrated his lifetime work on this topic. When Bowlby's wife, during World War II, asked him what he was going to do after the war, he said he planned to do research on separation, and when she said, “What else?” he declared, “That'll keep me busy for the rest of my life” (p. 5). As for the scope of van Dijken's attention to Bowlby's “early life,” it actually ranges from his birth to the 1950s, with one chapter being devoted to his personal experiences in childhood while the succeeding chapters, six in all, cover the origin and evolution of his views during his education, teaching, psychoanalytic training, and the beginnings of his professional career.
Preliminary to her discussion of the roots of attachment theory, van Dijken asks, “What caused Bowlby to focus his attention on separation?” (p. 6). We learn that childcare in the Bowlby home was turned over almost entirely to a nanny and her crew of nursemaids, a typical arrangement for people of that social station at that time, with both children and caregivers isolated in this case on the uppermost floor of the house. We also learn about young