Between love and aggression: the politics of John Bowlby

While much has been written on the work of the psychoanalyst John Bowlby, little comment has been made on his political activities and how they related to his theorizing. In his work it can be seen how psychoanalytic ideas of love underlay not only his theory of attachment, but also the creation of new political ideas. Bowlby’s collaboration with Evan Durbin, a little-known but important economist and political philosopher, was underpinned by a belief that social responsibility was an evolved psychological potentiality that could be actualized in the mother-child bonding processes. This reflected and reinforced their democratic socialist vision. Furthermore, their work helped usher in a new technological framework for conceiving of social policy, a framework that would dominate British politics after the Second World War. This is illuminated in considering Bowlby’s role in the evacuation scheme and Durbin’s contributions to Clement Attlee’s government.