Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development

My readers who know my work (see Getting Past Your Breakup: How to Turn a Devastating Loss into the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You) know that I rely heavily on John Bowlby's work. I did not have this book when I was doing my academic research and writing on grief, but I did use a lot of his work (with Mary Ainsworth) on attachment and development. It is there in his 3 volume set on Attachment and Loss. But this book fleshes it out more and though it repeats a lot of what is in the first volume on Attachment, it is still worth it to get. Especially if you are a Bowlby junkie like I am.

This collection of lectures and previously published papers brings together the essentials of Bolwlby's contributions. The first paper summaries his work on the effects of separation of children from their caregivers that was intrumental in bringing ciritical changes in the manner that hospitals and other institutions deal with children's separations from their caregivers. He succinctly summarizes his formulation of attachment theory, which is now regarded as the keystone for understanding infants' early relationships with their caregivers. As a bonus, there are two papers on psychoanalysis as a science that forshadow the need to bring together psychoanalysis as a discipline and the emerging knowledge about brain development that is being acquired by neuroscientists. It is a pleasure to read this small volume. Joe Palombo

Freud saw the development of the ability to form affectionate bonds through the dark glass of psychoanalysis. Bowlby and his associates have given us the ability to see the development of inter-personal relations with the clarity of the scientific method and with deep human understanding. Anyone interested in improving our ability to love one another will find this book useful.