Psychodynamic theories Bowlby

What was Bowlby’s key idea?

Bowlby argued to form meaningful social relationships as an adult, an individual must have a close and dependant relationship with their mother in the first few years. If this attachment is broken or disrupted during the first 2 and a half years f life the child will suffer irreversible long-term consequences of this maternal deprivation. This could in a condition Bowlby called ‘affectionless psychopathy’.

What is affectionless pscyhopathy

• This is the inability to experience guilt or strong emotions for others

• This prevents the person developing normal relationships and is associated with criminality

• They cannot appreciate the feelings of victims and so lack remorse

• Bowlby presented evidence that early maternal deprivation was related to later criminal behaviour through his ‘44 thieves study’.

What study did Bowlby look into for affectionless psychopathy

The aim of this study was to investigate the long term effects of maternal deprivation in order see whether delinquents have suffered deprivation.

Procedure:

Bowlby sampled 88 children where half of them were juvenile thieves and the other half were individuals who suffered with emotional problems but had not committed crimes - control group.

Findings:

He found that more then half of the juvenile thieves were separated from their mothers for longer than 6 months during their first five years of life. In the control group only two had such separation.

He also found 14 if the young thieves had ‘affectionless psychopathy’ and none from the control group.

He also found that 86% of the ‘affectionless psychopathy’ in the thieves group had experienced maternal deprivation before the age of 5.

Conclusion:

He concluded that maternal separation/deprivation in the child’s early life caused permanent emotional damage called ‘affectionless psychopathy’.

Strengths of Bowlby’s psychodynamic theory

His research showed that more of his sample of 44 juvenile delinquents had suffered maternal deprivation than a control group of non delinquents.

His work shows the need to consider the role of parent-child relationship rather than biological reasonings.

Limitations of Bowly’’s psychodynamic theory

We cannot be sure it is accurate as the children and parents involved in the study may not accurately pass information

Not all the thieves experienced early separation from their mothers. This means that it only had a partial explanation.

Bowly’’s later additional study of 60 children with early maternal deprivation found no evidence of affectionless psychopathy.