Attachment-based therapy (children)
Attachment-based therapy applies to interventions or approaches based on attachment theory, originated by John Bowlby. These range from individual therapeutic approaches to public health programs to interventions specifically designed for foster carers. Although attachment theory has become a major scientific theory of socioemotional development with one of the broadest, deepest research lines in modern psychology, attachment theory has, until recently, been less clinically applied than theories with far less empirical support. This may be partly due to lack of attention paid to clinical application by Bowlby himself and partly due to broader meanings of the word 'attachment' used amongst practitioners. It may also be partly due to the mistaken association of attachment theory with the pseudo-scientific interventions misleadingly known as attachment therapy. The approaches set out below are examples of recent clinical applications of attachment theory by mainstream attachment theorists and clinicians and are aimed at infants or children who have developed or are at risk of developing less desirable, insecure attachment styles or an attachment disorder.
History of attachment theory
Bowlby's first official representations were carried out for the relationship theory in three very controversial lectures in 1957 by the British Psychoanalytical Society in London. The formal origin of attachment theory can be traced to the publication of two 1958 papers, one being Bowlby's "The Nature of the Child's Tie to his Mother", in which the precursory concepts of "attachment" were introduced, and Harry Harlow's "The Nature of Love", based on the results of experiments which showed, approximately, that infant rhesus monkeys spent more time with soft mother-like dummies that offered no food than they did with dummies that provided a food source but were less pleasant to the touch. Bowlby followed this up with two more papers, "Separation Anxiety" (1960a), and "Grief and Mourning in Infancy and Early Childhood" (1960b). At about the same time, Bowlby's former colleague, Mary Ainsworth was completing extensive observational studies on the nature of infant attachments in Uganda with Bowlby's ethological theories in mind. Mary Ainsworth's innovative methodology and comprehensive observational studies informed much of the theory, expanded its concepts and enabled some of its tenets to be empirically tested. Attachment theory was finally presented in 1969 in "Attachment" the first volume of the "Attachment and Loss" trilogy. The second and third volumes, "Separation: Anxiety and Anger" and "Loss: Sadness and Depression" followed in 1972 and 1980 respectively. "Attachment" was revised in 1982 to incorporate more recent research.