Separation: Anxiety and Anger (Attachment and Loss, Volume 2)
E. J. Bowlby
Language: English
Pages: 415
ISBN: B00Y2QG7S2
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Publish Year note: First published in 1972
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Separation, the second volume of Attachment and Loss, continues John Bowlby's influential work on the importance of the parental relationship to mental health.
Here he considers separation and the anxiety that accompanies it: the fear of imminent or anticipated separation, the fear induced by parental threats of separation, and the inversion of the parent-child relationship.
Dr Bowlby re-examines the situations that cause us to feel fear and compares them with evidence from animals. He concludes that fear is initially aroused by certain elemental situations - sudden movement, darkness or separation - which, although intrinsically harmless, are indicative of an increased risk of danger.
seems probable, are elicited in children and adolescents who not only experience repeated separations but are constantly subjected to the threat of being abandoned. In Chapter 15 descriptions are given of the intense distress produced in young children by such threats, especially when the threats are given a cloak of verisimilitude. During the treatment of Mrs Q it seemed that nothing had caused her greater pain and distress than her mother’s realistic threats either to abandon the family or to
mothers: in one case mother had had multiple sclerosis from the time the patient was aged seven. Of this total of twenty-four patients three had had a parent figure who had been agoraphobic: one a father, one a mother, and one the grandmother with whom she lived. Eight patients described themselves as having suffered from anxiety as children; of these two were school refusers and one was agoraphobic. Despite the manifest limitations of this evidence there is good reason to believe that in over
them in only slight degree. It must therefore be strongly emphasized that, in concentrating on the one set of criteria to the exclusion of others, no claim is made that the criteria selected are the only ones of importance. The reason for so concentrating is that in the practice of psychiatry the issues that must be our first concern are those of mental health and ill health. In so far as in our actions we may apply other criteria we are doing so simply as adherents of a professional ethic or as
attachment behaviour, 42, 71, 78, 235–6 after separation, 71, 76 behaviour and fear, 115–17, 118, 147–51 function of, 173, 178 attachment figure, 43, 123, 234–44 attack, fear and exploration, 117, 165–6, 292–3 autism, 221–2 Autobiographical Study (Freud), 449 availability, of attachment figures, 42–4, 234–44 and anxiety, 43, 51, 63–6, 73, 120, 283, 299 and behaviour in nursery school, 400–401 and confidence, 51, 119–20, 190, 235–8, 242–4, 357, 396, 406–7, 409 and fear, 123, 136, 164,
briefly in Chapter 4, see here above). Chapter 7 Situations that Arouse Fear in Humans . . . certain ideas of supernatural agency, associated with real circumstances, produce a peculiar kind of horror. This horror is probably explicable as the result of a combination of simpler horrors. To bring the ghostly terror to its maximum, many usual elements of the dreadful must combine, such as loneliness, darkness, inexplicable sounds, especially of a dismal character, moving figures