Encounters With John Bowlby

Encounters with John Bowlby: Tales of Attachment is an insightful, heartfelt and faithful homage to John Bowlby (1907-1990), the ‘father’ of attachment theory. The book unfolds as a touching and absorbing biographical journey into his life and work, where Bowlby is portrayed vividly through his individual, family and group attachment history, as well as his personal and professional development. This is a thoroughly researched and unique volume: a creative hybrid of scholarly erudition and passionately-delivered real life experiences covering the entire field of attachment. The work is co-constructed from the privileged position of sitting at the feet of the founder of the theory, drawing on his lifelong research and knowledge. The reader can learn from and identify with stirring, true stories that illustrate the struggle to become attached, to survive, and to grow. Encounters with John Bowlby will appeal to anyone who is interested in personal development and relationships. It will be of special interest to mental health professionals, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, social workers, psychoanalysts and group analysts, as well as other healthcare professionals, such as general practitioners and paediatricians. The text will also be useful to students undertaking doctoral courses or attending other courses related to attachment and John Bowlby.

Encounters with John Bowlby: Tales of Attachment is an insightful, heartfelt and faithful homage to John Bowlby (1907-1990), the ‘father’ of attachment theory. The book unfolds as a touching and absorbing biographical journey into his life and work, where Bowlby is portrayed vividly through his individual, family and group attachment history, as well as his personal and professional development. This is a thoroughly researched and unique volume: a creative hybrid of scholarly erudition and passionately-delivered real life experiences covering the entire field of attachment. The work is co-constructed from the privileged position of sitting at the feet of the founder of the theory, drawing on his lifelong research and knowledge. The reader can learn from and identify with stirring, true stories that illustrate the struggle to become attached, to survive, and to grow. Encounters with John Bowlby will appeal to anyone who is interested in personal development and relationships. It will be of special interest to mental health professionals, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, social workers, psychoanalysts and group analysts, as well as other healthcare professionals, such as general practitioners and paediatricians. The text will also be useful to students undertaking doctoral courses or attending other courses related to attachment and John Bowlby.

This edited book contains a hitherto unpublished seminar held by the author in Milan, Italy in 1985. The seminar is preceded by a foreword by Kate White, of the Bowlby Centre, and by an introduction by the editor, Marco Bacciagaluppi. The introduction contains excerpts from unpublished correspondence between the author and the editor, carried out over a span of eight years, between 1982 and 1990. After the seminar there are the follow-ups of the three cases presented by Leopolda Pelizzaro, Ferruccio Osimo and Emilia Fumagalli, and a report by Germana Agnetti and Angelo Barbato, who gave hospitality to the author and his wife. This is followed by a contribution by Ferruccio Osimo on experiential dynamic psychotherapy, an application of attachment theory, with a long case study. At the end there are some concluding remarks by the editor.

This is an absorbing book on the warm encounter between one of the sharpest British thinkers of the 20th Century, and a thriving young doctor from Spain who comes to study with him. Their relationship developed from 1984 to 1990 at the London Tavistock Clinic, the largest provider of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Europe. The story is personal and shows the affection between the two men, a delicate yet invigorating shift from a story told to a story lived. The book pays a heartfelt homage to John Bowlby (1907-1990), father of Attachment Theory; to the strangely precise and transparent naturalness of his thinking; to his gentleness, compassion and encouragement; to his overwhelming humanity; and finally, to his genius. Bowlbys own development and attachment history are vividly portrayed. His message was deceptively simple: we need our mothers and fathers and groups. We need one another. The author, Arturo Ezquerro (a consultant psychiatrist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, group analyst, and former Head of a London Medical Psychotherapy Department) aims to be unashamedly inclusive, sensitive to diversity and undogmatic. Mental health professionals and trainees may appreciate a reasoned integration of theory, research, training and clinical practice. Yet, the text is also accessible to anyone who is interested in relationships and personal development, or who has ever been a patient. Moreover, the reader might learn from and identify with touching real life experiences that show our struggle to become attached, to survive, and to grow.

As Bowlby himself points out in his introduction to this seminal childcare book, to be a successful parent means a lot of very hard work. Giving time and attention to children means sacrificing other interests and activities, but for many people today these are unwelcome truths. Bowlby’s work showed that the early interactions between infant and caregiver have a profound impact on an infant's social, emotional, and intellectual growth. Controversial yet powerfully influential to this day, this classic collection of Bowlby’s lectures offers important guidelines for child rearing based on the crucial role of early relationships.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International] licence. It is free to read at Oxford Clinical Psychology Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Attachment theory is among the most popular theories of human socioemotional development, with a global research community and widespread interest from clinicians, child welfare professionals, educationalists and parents. It has been considered "one of the most generative contemporary ideas" about family life in modern society. It is one of the last of the grand theories of human development that still retains an active research tradition. Attachment theory and research speak to fundamental questions about human emotions, relationships and development. They do so in terms that feel experience-near, with a remarkable combination of intuitive ideas and counter-intuitive assessments and conclusions. Over time, attachment theory seems to have become more, rather than less, appealing and popular, in part perhaps due to alignment with current concern with the lifetime implications of early brain development Cornerstones of Attachment Research re-examines the work of key laboratories that have contributed to the study of attachment. In doing so, the book traces the development in a single scientific paradigm through parallel but separate lines of inquiry. Chapters address the work of Bowlby, Ainsworth, Main and Hesse, Sroufe and Egeland, and Shaver and Mikulincer. Cornerstones of Attachment Research utilises attention to these five research groups as a lens on wider themes and challenges faced by attachment research over the decades. The chapters draw on a complete analysis of published scholarly and popular works by each research group, as well as much unpublished material.

This groundbreaking reconceptualization of attachment theory brings together leading scholars from psychology, anthropology and related fields to reformulate the theory to fit the cultural realities of our world. It will be of particular interest to scholars and graduate students interested in developmental psychology, developmental anthropology, evolutionary biology and cross-cultural psychology.