The ongoing growth of attachment research has given rise to new perspectives on classic theoretical questions as well as fruitful new debates. This unique book identifies nine central questions facing the field and invites leading authorities to address them in 46 succinct chapters. Multiple perspectives are presented on what constitutes an attachment relationship, the best ways to measure attachment security, how internal working models operate, the importance of early attachment relationships for later behavior, challenges in cross-cultural research, how attachment-based interventions work, and more. The concluding chapter by the editors delineates points of convergence and divergence among the contributions and distills important implications for future theory and research.

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.

In this book, early childcare professionals will gain an understanding of the theories of attachment as well as the background and research of the prominent minds behind them. This book explains the core elements of each theorist’s work and the ways these elements impact and support interactions with babies, including the topics of bonding, feeding practices, separation anxiety, and stranger anxiety. Carol Garhart Mooney, also the author of the best-selling Theories of Childhood, has worked as a preschool teacher and college instructor of early childhood education for over thirty years.

As Bowlby himself points out in his introduction to this seminal childcare book, to be a successful parent means a lot of very hard work. Giving time and attention to children means sacrificing other interests and activities, but for many people today these are unwelcome truths. Bowlby’s work showed that the early interactions between infant and caregiver have a profound impact on an infant's social, emotional, and intellectual growth. Controversial yet powerfully influential to this day, this classic collection of Bowlby’s lectures offers important guidelines for child rearing based on the crucial role of early relationships.

This book defines the centrality of love and loss in human life and in human meaning. Bowlby's Attachment theory forms the basis for understanding our selves and our relationships. The author proposes that love is the subjective experience of attachment and that dyadic relationships are the source of ultimate meaning. He supports his theses with a tour de force integration of ideas from attachment theory, psychoanalysis, neuroscience and existential philosophy. He argues that the quality of attachment between mother and infant lays the foundation for the formation of individual identity and ultimately shapes our capacity to engage in relationships with others. The author describes loss as the reciprocal of attachment and considers the enormous influence of loss on our moods, sense of identity, and our desire to live or die. The final segments of the book describe the implications of this analysis and links it to the meaning and purpose of human life. All of us seek to understand the meaning of life, and especially the meaning of our own lives.