Bowlby, Attachment and the Potency of a ‘Received Idea’

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of a report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) that furnished a mostly coruscating account of John Bowlby’s work on child attachment and maternal deprivation. Despite the WHO critique and a range of other critical interrogations, Bowlby contributions still constitute a ‘received idea’ within the discourse of social work. If criticisms are made of Bowlby, and what has been dubbed the ‘Bowlby School’, the reference point tends to be cogent feminist critiques emerging in the final quarter of the twentieth century. This article aims to excavate critical appraisals from the 1950s and 1960s. It will also be argued that endeavours to ‘retrofit’ Bowlby for our contemporary times present problems.