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How Much Attention And Nurturing Children Receive

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How much attention and nurturing children receive does, in fact, affect how they will develop as adolescents and adults in areas of personality, emotion, and social interaction. John Bowlby, a British researcher, a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is well-known in Psychology for his research specializing in parent or primary caregiver-child relationships. His research influenced Mary Ainsworth who later became his research assistant and continued his research on attachment after his death. Being neglected as a child by parents and caregivers, he understood the negative effects of growing up lonely and detached. John Bowlby founded the attachment theory, an essential theory in Psychology that reveals the negative impact of neglect and is now used as a reference to understand its effects. The theory is an important advance in Developmental Psychology because children were now viewed as vulnerable and need the care to develop to their full potential development. Therefore, methods of how to understand and interact with the victims of neglect were needed for professionals in the fields of medicine, law, and education.

Being born into an upper-class family in the 20th century, John Bowlby was a prime example of a victim of neglect. Upper-class families often left their children to caregivers and seldom interacted with them, similar to Bowlby’s case. Elizabeth Carr and Mauricio Cortina in Heinz Kohut and John Bowlby: The Men and Their Ideas suggest Bowlby suffered from

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