Book review: Encounters with John Bowlby. Tales of Attachment

By Arturo Ezquerro (Routledge, 2016)

Arturo’s book is more than a sound and accessible introduction to the work of John Bowlby.  Grounded in place and time, it is a deeply personal book written not only from the perspective of an intimate connection with his subject but also from a lifetime’s experience of rediscovering Bowlby’s theory and guiding principles in the light of every day practice.  It bears testament to the fruitfulness of what was clearly a close and rewarding supervisory relationship thoroughly internalised.

His account is sensitive to personal and social contexts, providing glimpses of John Bowlby’s early childhood in Edwardian England, and how he made his way as a young man in the educational, political and professional worlds of the inter war years.

The main focus is on the Post War years when the Welfare State & National Health Service were in process of coming into being and when Bowlby became Director of the Department of Children & Parents at the Tavistock Clinic. Arturo is a particularly astute guide in providing observations which illuminate the challenges that organisations like the Tavistock Clinic faced and posed, at a time when psychoanalytic thinking was establishing itself in a wider context and Attachment Theory was in process of development.

Nearly 30 years after Bowlby’s death most clinicians, counsellors and therapists may tend to assume that Attachment Theory is mainstream and therefore implicit in all we do.  One of the many rewards to be found in an enjoyable read of Arturo’s book will be to find yourself engaged in a gently challenging encounter with what it means to live and work in the continuing presence of a benign authority, someone fundamentally imbued with the value of integrity and respect. A foundation of secure attachment invites a lifelong commitment to the pursuit of connection in the face of all the expectable vicissitudes of rupture and disconnection, but it also provides a good enough basis to make it more than just worthwhile.

It would not have been difficult to find examples in plenty to illustrate this assertion, whether implicit in the challenges Bowlby faced himself, or time and again in exploring the developments required of his theoretical stance, or the appalling challenge to society at large of the discovery in the 70’s that abuses of power, emotionally, physically and sexually were widespread and particularly shockingly because this included particularly  sexual exploitation of children by parents, relatives, friends, carers, and people with respected roles in the community, as well as strangers. Arturo’s book not only reminds us of the importance of history and the value of good theory but it exemplifies what it means to have a securely internalised benign guide at our side on that journey.

I recommend the book warmly.

Desmond King
Consultant Chartered Clinical Psychologist, Member Institute of Group Analysis