Bowlby | Edward John Mostyn

John Bowlby, the son of a surgeon, was born on 26 Feb 1907. He read medicine at Cambridge University, where he developed an interest in developmental psychology. On completion of his degree at Cambridge, he studied clinical medicine and psychoanalysis at University College Hospital, London. He began practical work in this field by volunteering at the Maudseley Hospital and the London Child Guidance Clinic.

In 1937 he qualified with the British Psychoanalytical Society to work analytically with adults and in the same year began to train as a child analyst, becoming a member of the Society in 1939. By this time, he had already begun to develop his central idea that the basic cause of mental disorders could be traced to interactions between child and parent. This research was interrupted by the outbreak of war; he joined the Emergency Medical Service and then the Army Medical Corps, serving as a major and then a Lieutenant Colonel, although all the while engaging in the life of the British Psychoanalytical Society where he became Training Secretary of the in 1944. He served in the army until the end of hostilities in 1945.

In the same year he was appointed head of the Children's Department at the Tavistock Clinic in London. Because of his emphasis on the importance of family relations he renamed it the Department for Children and Parents. Whilst undertaking a study of homeless children for the World Health Organization in 1950, Bowlby first coined the term 'maternal deprivation' and argued for the damaging effects of the absence of a mother or mother-figure. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, he wrote some of his most famous papers, including 'The Nature of the Child's Tie to this Mother' (1958) and 'Grief and Mourning in Infancy' (1960). He died of a stroke on the Isle of Skye in 1990.

Child psychologist and psychoanalyst

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Revised 2024-04-04

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Revised by Ewan O'Neill