III. Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment and Loss

A Feminist Reconsideration

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12259172
AutoresRose J Cleary (514 Main Street, Lewiston, Maine 04240-6200, USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año1999
Volumen9
Número1
Páginas32-42
Fecha de publicación1999-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaFeminism & Psychology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0959-3535 • E-ISSN: 1461-7161
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0959353599009001004
OpenAlexW2119516918
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas27

If growth is to proceed smoothly, the tissues [of the embryo] must be exposed to the influence of the appropriate organizer at certain critical periods. In the same way, if mental development is to proceed smoothly, it would appear to be necessary for the undifferentiated psyche to be exposed during certain critical periods to the influence of the psychic organizer – the mother (John Bowlby, 1951: 53). (emphasis added) Bowlby’s use of this image of the developing embryo as a metaphor for the un-differentiated psyche is certainly in synch with the organizing mythos of 20th-century western culture. Like the embryo floating through the film 2001 Space Odyssey, this image of the psyche, gleaned from Bowlby’s study of the plight of homeless children in postwar Europe, envisions subjectivity in a timeless, decon-textualized and abstracted theoretical space. In Re-visioning Psychology James Hillman has observed that while the ancients had mythology, we have psy-chology. Psychology is our mythology (Hillman, 1975). According to the tradi-tions of western psychology, the psyche (subjectivity) is conceived of as whole, unified, self-contained, and as essentially unalterable by the artifices of time and place (Morawski, 1994). Like the undifferentiated embryo, subjectivity is seen as genderless, and without race, class, culture or ancestry. What the psyche needs, according to this mythology of individualism, is a mother who ‘orients him in space and time, provides his environment, permits satisfaction of some impulses and restricts others ’ (Bowlby, 1951: 53). It is the actual relationship with the mother – not the historical and cultural circumstance – which organizes the psyche according to the constricted mythos of western psychology

Attachment theory · Developmental psychology · Feminism · Feminist theory · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics · Gender Studies · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Representations and Identity