Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis

John Bowlby was, of course, a psychoanalyst. He trained in an era that was dominated by the Freuds on the one hand and Kleinians on the other. He was also a child psychiatrist and, during WWII, he worked within a child guidance service where he studied the behaviour of maladapted children in relation to their early experiences of caregiving. Here, the first seeds of attachment theory were planted. His observational study into the psychology of these children showed compelling evidence of links between their insecure attachment relationships and challenging behaviour.

Bowlby went on to develop a huge body of work that elaborated and provided empirical evidence for this assertion. Yet, while the value of these insights is so widely embraced today, sections of the psychoanalytic community did not rush to approve. Bowlby’s essentially scientific method was received by many colleagues as an uncomfortable challenge to the intrapsychic approach by privileging the actual relationship. Indeed, so deeply felt was this tension that it still has echoes within our trainings and professional literature, prompting ongoing questions about where attachment theory meets psychoanalysis and where the psychosocial environment is seen as the key to emotional health.

In re-examining this tension, our three speakers will offer distinct but not incompatible ideas about how it might be resolved. On the one hand it will be suggested that neurophysiology, with its insistence on biological reality, conclusively proves the primacy of relationship in relational health. From an alternative perspective, we will consider if it is Relational Psychoanalysis that offers the perfect synthesis between attachment and psychoanalytic schools. Or, alternatively, whether a multi-faceted, integrative theoretical approach inherently dissolves oppositional theoretical positions and allows for the best therapy to occur.

Will this finally conclude the debate, or prompt another?