These words could have come straight from John Bowlby,
considered to be the father of attachment theory. I summarize
his work in my book Keeping Your Child in Mind as follows: In
England during World War II, as in most Western societies at
that time, a mother was thought of mainly as a provider of the
physical necessities of food and shelter. The mother–child
relationship itself was accorded little value; children were
routinely removed from their families to keep them safe, and
hospitalized children were separated from their parents for long
periods of time. D. W. Winnicott, a pediatrician turned
psychoanalyst, was among the first to introduce a different way
of thinking. He saw that children developed a strong, healthy
sense of self when the people close to them accepted their
feelings and helped to manage their emotional experiences. To
describe this ideal situation, Winnicott coined the phrase “the
holding environment.” The way in which a mother makes sense of
her infant’s expression gives rise to what Wi