Bowlby and Harry Harlow on Attachment Behavior
Frank C. P. van der Horst1 , Helen A. LeRoy2 and René van der Veer1
(1) Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9555, NL-2300RB Leiden, The Netherlands
(2) Harlow Primate Laboratory, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA
Frank C. P. van der Horst
Email: fhorst@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Received: 12 February 2008 Accepted: 21 August 2008 Published online: 3 September 2008
Abstract From 1957 through the mid-1970s, John Bowlby, one of the founders of attachment theory, was in close personal and scientific contact with Harry Harlow. In constructing his new theory on the nature of the bond between children and their caregivers, Bowlby profited highly from Harlow’s experimental work with rhesus monkeys. Harlow in his turn was influenced and inspired by Bowlby’s new thinking. On the basis of the correspondence between Harlow and Bowlby, their mutual participation in scientific meetings, archival materials, and an analysis of their scholarly writings, both the personal relationship between John Bowlby and Harry Harlow and the cross-fertilization of their work are described.
Keywords Attachment theory - Animal psychology - Ethology - Animal behavior - Infant–mother relations - History
Frank C.P. van der Horst is a PhD student and Lecturer at the Centre for Child and Family Studies at Leiden University, The Netherlands. The work presented in this special issue is part of his doctoral thesis on the roots of Bowlby’s attachment theory. The defence of this thesis, titled John Bowlby and ethology: a study of cross-fertilization, is scheduled for early 2009.