Name of Theory
Attachment Theory.
Introduction
In the last several decades, attachment theory has provided couple and family therapists and researchers with a map for understanding love and bonding in couple and family relationships. The science of attachment has grown tremendously and now has a large base of research support from the fields of social psychology, development, and neuroscience.
Prominent Figures
British psychiatrist John Bowlby (1907–1990) outlined the basic theory of attachment: a developmental understanding of personality with a focus on emotion regulation in his trilogy on Attachment and Loss (1969–1982).
Mary Ainsworth helped Bowlby create the Strange Situation research paradigm where a mother leaves a baby alone with a stranger for a few minutes and the babies’ responses are coded on reunion. This allowed the normative and individual differences principles of attachment to be outlined.
Since the late 1980s, adult attachment has been outlined by North American...
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References
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Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss (Vol. 3). New York: Basic Books.
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Johnson, S.M. (2018). Attachment Theory. In: Lebow, J., Chambers, A., Breunlin, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_215-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_215-1
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