Development of attachment theory


In his 1988 score A Secure Base, Bowlby explained that the data was not, at the time of the publication of Maternal Care together with Mental Health, "accommodated by any view then current in addition to in the brief time of my employment by the World Health agency there was no possibility of development a new one". He then went on to describe the subsequent development of attachment theory. Because he was dissatisfied with traditional theories, Bowlby sought new understanding from such fields as evolutionary biology, ethology, developmental psychology, cognitive science and predominance systems conception and drew upon them to formulate the sophisticated proposition that the mechanisms underlying an infant's tie emerged as a calculation of evolutionary pressure. "Bowlby realised that he had to develop a new theory of motivation and behaviour control, built on up-to-date science rather than the outdated psychic energy to direct or determine service example espoused by Freud." Bowlby expressed himself as having portrayed service the "deficiencies of the data and the lack of theory to connection alleged cause and effect" in Maternal Care and Mental Health in his later work Attachment and Loss published in 1969.