so long as our history is hidden from us, so long as we hide our history from ourselves, we are very likely to see the present and future in the terms of the past
John Bowlby (1989) Attachment and Loss: Continuing Education Seminars.
| 1915 | Sigmund Freud presents Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis at University of Vienna, presenting the core elements of psychoanalysis in an accessible way. The lectures are published in 1917 |
| 1929 | John Bowlby reported that his interest in psychological issues was kindled in 1929 whilst working at a school for troubled children, following studies in natural science at Cambridge |
| 1942 | Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham record the first observations of how infants and young children behave when separated from mother at the Hampstead War Nurseries during the second world war |
| 1945 | René Spitz and Katherine Wolf study and report that infants deprived of maternal care, stimulation and love became withdrawn, lost weight, suffered from severe developmental decline and sometimes died |
| 1948 | In 1948 Bowlby founded the Separation Research Unit at the Tavistock Clinic and appointed James Robertson as an assistant for a study of the effects on young children of hospitalization with no or minimal visitation from their parents |
| 1950 | In 1950 Bowlby expanded the research group, appointing Mary Ainsworth as a clinical postdoctoral researcher |