Linking Attachment Theory & Neuroscience
by June Manala Founding father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was a medical doctor and a neurologist before he became a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. John Bowlby (1907-1990), who founded attachment theory, was a medical doctor, child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, but worked as an ethnologist with animals in nature before pursuing his other professional interests. He drew on all of these areas of expertise to formulate his ideas on attachment. His follower, developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth (1913-1999), researched attachment with mothers…