John Bowlby and the Tavistock Separation Research Unit

Abstract This chapter focuses on the work of John Bowlby. It describes the lines of agreement and disagreement between Bowlby and the psychoanalytic theory of his day, and the extent of his debt to Robert Hinde and ethology. The chapter clarifies ways in which incompatibilities between psychoanalysis and ethology have contributed to tensions within Bowlby’s work and subsequent attachment theory. The chapter discusses Bowlby’s unpublished book written with Jimmy Robertson in the 1950s and 1960s on the effects of major separations experienced by young children. It presents previously unavailable ideas from Bowlby’s unpublished book on defence mechanisms from the 1960s, which sheds light on his later information processing model. The chapter also pieces together the full story of Bowlby’s work with a patient, Mrs Q. The chapter closes by discussing some ways in which limitations in Bowlby’s work have proven to be obstacles for later attachment researchers.