John Bowlby

John Bowlby was a British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded attachment theory by studying children’s bonds with caregivers and the effects of separation.

Attachment theory: A psychological framework explaining how bonds with caregivers shape security, development, and later relationships. Bowlby founded this framework to explain children’s enduring bonds with caregivers.
Attachment behavior: Actions such as crying, following, and clinging that help an infant maintain proximity to a caregiver. Bowlby treated these actions as an organized system rather than learned habits.
Forty-four Juvenile Thieves: Bowlby’s 1944 study comparing children referred for stealing with a control group of children. The study linked early separations with later difficulties, influencing Bowlby’s research program.
Learning theory: A family of psychological theories explaining behavior through learning processes such as conditioning and reinforcement. Bowlby rejected the idea that attachment is merely a learned response to feeding.
Psychoanalysis: A theory and therapeutic tradition that explores unconscious processes and their influence on thought and behavior. Bowlby trained in this tradition, then challenged its account of early relationships.
Internal working model: A mental representation of oneself and others that guides expectations and behavior in relationships. Bowlby proposed these models as products of repeated experiences with caregivers.
Maternal Care and Mental Health: A 1951 World Health Organization report by Bowlby on maternal care and child mental health. This report brought Bowlby’s claims about deprivation to an international policy audience.
Strange Situation: Mary Ainsworth’s laboratory procedure for observing infant responses to separation and reunion with a caregiver. It operationalized attachment patterns and developed Bowlby’s broad framework into testable classifications.
Ethology: The scientific study of animal behavior, especially behavior observed in natural settings. Bowlby adapted ethological ideas to explain attachment as an evolved behavioral system.
Separation anxiety: Distress that arises when a person fears or experiences separation from an attachment figure. Bowlby interpreted it as a predictable response to threatened loss of caregiver proximity.

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