British psychiatrist John Bowlby revolutionized our understanding of human development by scientifically demonstrating that the nature of our early bonds with our parents plays a crucial role throughout our lives. When parents provide a secure emotional base, encouraging their children to seek autonomy while giving them support and encouragement, children grow up psychologically stable and able to make the most of life's opportunities. In this book, Bowlby elaborates these ideas and offers further evidence of the ways in which strong emotional ties promote mental health. -- from Publisher description.

Includes indexes.

Caring for children -- The origins of attachment -- Psychoanalysis as art and science -- Psychoanalysis as a natural science -- Violence in the family -- On knowing what you are not supposed to know and feeling what you are not supposed to feel -- The role of attachment in personality development -- Attachment, communication, and the therapeutic process -- Developmental psychiatry comes of age.