This essay will discuss, compare and analyse various theories of attachment and bonding, and how it can affect the emotional health of the individual. A well known psychiatrist called John Bowlby made a statement to the World Health Organisation which was as follows: ‘The prolonged deprivation of the young child of maternal care may have grave and far reaching effects on his character and so the whole future of his life’ John Bowlby was British and trained as a child psychiatrist.
He was influenced by Freud’s psycho-analytic approach and had strong beliefs that early childhood experiences could influence a child’s development. He also believed that attachment was a two way relationship that is formed between the infant and another person, the other person usually being the mother. In Bowlby’s theory, there was a biologically based and instinctive need to build attachment. (Gross 2005) Bowlby was particularly interested in the effects of separation of children from their parents.
He studied a group of post war children, bearing in mind these children had been through evacuation, deportation, and bereavement, and they had also suffered the disruption which was happening to families all over Europe. Bowlby studied in depth the children who had been separated from their parents and alongside this he interviewed disturbed adolescents, he found a strong link between what he called ‘maternal deprivation’ and the problems in adult life such as mental illness, delinquency and difficulties in parenting. (Beckett 2002)
In 1946 John Bowlby had been requested to study the family history of 44 juvenile thieves, from his study Bowlby discovered that out of the 44 seventeen of them had been separated from their mothers for six months or more before their fifth birthday. He then compared his findings with 44 adolescents who already had emotional problems but where not ‘thieves’. He noted that 14 showed affectionless psychopathy, they where also recorded as having no feelings of affection, warmth or concern for anyone. Bowlby firmly believed that these adolescent problems where a result from the experience of early separation.