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The theory of attachment in its present form is the fruit of the combined labors of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth (Bretherton 1991). The basic principles of the theory were developed by Bowlby. Bowlby's search for an explanation of the disturbed functioning of individuals who in early childhood had experienced traumatic losses or early separations led him to elaborate a theory of normal development which draws on concepts of psychoanalysis, ethology, and cybernetics. He has offered us a new way of conceiving how the tie between newborn and mother is formed and how it is destructured as a result of a separation or deprivation. Ainsworth has not only further developed certain theoretical notions, but she has also carried out empirical studies which have shed light on possible explanations of individual differences in attachment relationships and on the concepts of the caregiver as a “secure base.”
John Bowlby (1940) had always maintained that psychoanalysis, in its search to explain the psychic development of the individual, placed too much weight on the world of the child's phantasy and too little on that of real events.