“Rewriting psychoanalysis in the light of ethological principles”: On the relevance of Attachment Theory to the psychoanalytic field “Reescrevendo a psicanálise à lυz dos

Abstract

Attachment theory is extremely important today, not only within psychology, but also in several other fields, such as psychiatry. John Bowlby, its creator, stated several times that his main theoretical basis was the work of Freud. However, the conceptual relationship between psychoanalysis and attachment theory is not universally agreed upon among researchers. In this article, we try to contribute to this discussion by analyzing Bowlby’s vocabulary, or rather, by analyzing the evolution of his vocabulary. If this author used a Freudian, psychoanalytic terminology until the end of the 1950s, by the end of the 1960s (when he began to publish his famous trilogy) there was no longer any trace of Freudian vocabulary in his work. Is belonging to a discursive field sustainable under these conditions?