John Bowlby and Attachment Theory

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Jeremy Holmes worked for 35 years as a consultant psychiatrist and medical psychotherapist in the National Health Service. He is currently visiting professor at the University of Exeter, UK, where he set up a Doctoral programme in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. In 2009 he received the prestigious Bowlby-Ainsworth Award for his contributions to the field of Attachment. Second edition, completely revised and updated John Bowlby is one of the outstanding psychological theorists of the twentieth century. This new edition of John Bowlby and Attachment Theory is both a biographical account of Bowlby and his ideas and an up-to-date introduction to contemporary attachment theory and research, now a dominant force in psychology, counselling, psychotherapy and child development. Jeremy Holmes traces the evolution of Bowlby’s work from a focus on delinquency, material deprivation and his dissatisfaction with psychoanalysis's imperviousness to empirical science to the emergence of attachment theory as a psychological model in its own right. This new edition traces the explosion of interest, research and new theories generated by Bowlby’s followers, including Mary Main’s discovery of Disorganised Attachment and development of the Adult Attachment Interview, Mikulincer and Shaver’s explorations of attachment in adults and the key contributions of Fonagy, Bateman and Target. The book also examines advances in the biology and neuroscience of attachment. Thoroughly accessible yet academically rigorous, and written by a leading figure in the field, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory is still the perfect introduction to attachment for students of psychology, psychiatry, counselling, social work and nursing.

Bol Partner

Attachment Theory is one of the most important theoretical developments in psychoanalysis to have emerged in the past half-century. It combines the rigorous scientific empiricism of ethology with the subjective insights of psychoanalysis, and has had an enormous impact in the fields of child development, social work, psychology, and psychiatry. This is the first known book to appear which brings together John Bowlby and post-Bowlbian research and shows how the findings of Attachment Theory can inform the practice of psychotherapy. It also provides fascinating insights into the history of the psychoanalytic movement and looks at the ways in which Attachment Theory can help in the understanding of society and its problems.