Handbook of Attachment.

If handbook means “a small reference book providing specific information or instruction”, then this book does not fit the definition (1). Rather, it is a large, very complete review of the field of attachment. It also is a heartfelt tribute to Bowlby and Ainsworth. Early in Bowlby’s career, he became convinced that disruption in the mother/child relationship was seminal in the development of psychopathology, rather than the current psychoanalytic thinking that emphasized secondary drives and internal phantasy as causal. In 1944, he published his study of “44 Juvenile Thieves” that explicated his thesis about early life relationships and started an explosion of thought, study and publications (2). Meeting…