Loss - (Basic Books Classics) by John Bowlby (Paperback)

About the Book

This third volume of his "Attachment and Loss" series explores the implications for the psychology and psychopathology of personality of the ways in which young children respond to a temporary or permanent loss of a mother figure.

Book Synopsis

Bowlby's seminal contribution to the way we understand attachment concludes with an examination of loss. He offers not only a new developmental model but also rare insight into the dynamics of mourning, the problems of depression, and the processes of accommodation and healing. An appreciation by Daniel Stern, whose research on the mother/infant bond affirms and expands on Bowlby's work, fittingly graces this new edition.

From the Back Cover

This is the third and final volume of a work that explores the implications for the psychology and psychopathology of personality of the ways in which young children respond to a temporary or permanent loss of mother-figure. The primary data are observations of how young children behave in defined situations; in the light of these data an attempt is made to describe certain early phases of personality functioning and, from them, to extrapolate forwards.

About the Author

John Bowlby (1907-1990) was a British psychiatrist and longtime director of child psychology at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. Celebrated as "one of the most fertile, incisive thinkers about children of our century" (New York Times), his work pioneered attachment theory. He was the author of A Secure Base as well as the highly influential Attachment and Loss trilogy, whose Attachment, Separation, and Loss transformed psychoanalysis, childcare, and the study of attachment behavior.