Thought for today:
‘The fact that emotional feeling can be experienced during sleep is a reminder that not all processes having an emotional feeling phase originate in the environment.’
— John Bowlby
#thoughtfortoday #attachment #seperation #loss #JohnBowlby #psychotherapy #counselling
You might not be familiar with the name John Bowlby.
He is one of the architects of Attachment Theory, a significant model of behaviour.
He is in my thoughts today because I am doing some training on Attachment Theory and how it affects our relationships as adults.
If you read about Bowlby, then you will almost certainly find Mary Ainsworth and her “Strange Situation”.
When working with individuals and their relationships, attachment style is one way to explore present behaviour.
It was a real surprise to me in reading up on Bowlby to discover that he has a mountain named after him in Kyrgyzstan.
His magnum opus is the trilogy of works published as Attachment, Separation and Loss (three volumes) in 1969, 1972 and 1980 respectively.
I remember these, like so many psychology texts, as dense works of small font and somewhat dry, yet my interest in, and respect for, his work is undiminished.
There are four attachment styles – if you read about them you might recognise your own and it may help you understand your present approach in close relationships.
I know you don’t expect to be getting psychology lessons on a Sunday, it is just really fascinating to me!