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This article was originally presented as a Distinguished Scientific Contributions award address at the 98th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston in August 1990.
Author's note. John Bowlby's death on September 2, 1990, at his summer home on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, prevented him from completing all that he intended to do in preparing this article for publication. As his coauthor I am greatly saddened by his death, but am secure in the knowledge that he would have wished me to complete the task.
This is a historical account of the partnership in which Bowlby and Ainsworth participated to develop attachment theory and research. Beginning with their separate approaches to understanding personality development before Ainsworth joined Bowlby's research team at the Tavistock Clinic in London for 4 years, it describes the origins of the ethological approach that they adopted. After Ainsworth left London, her research in Uganda and in Baltimore lent empirical support to Bowlby's theoretical constructions. The article shows how their contributions to attachment theory and research interdigitated in a partnership that endured for 40 years across time and distance.
Editor's note. Articles based on APA award addresses that appear in the American Psychologist are scholarly articles by distinguished contributors to the field. As such, they are given special consideration in the American Psychologist's editorial selection process.
The distinguishing characteristic of the theory of attachment that we have jointly developed is that it is an ethological approach to personality development. We have had a long and happy partnership in pursuing this approach. In this article we wish to give a brief historical account of the initially separate but compatible approaches that eventually merged in the partnership, and how our contributions have intertwined in the course of developing an ethologically oriented theory of attachment and a body of research that has both stemmed from the theory and served...