Quotes from John Bowlby

At the time of his second birthday, for example, a healthy child whose mother is resting on a garden seat will make a series of excursions away from her, each time returning to her before making the next excursion. On some occasions, when he returns, he simply smiles and makes his number; on others he leans against her knee; on yet others he wants to climb on her lap. But never does he stay for long unless he is frightened or tired or thinks she is about to leave.

Thus, continues Langer, the question is no longer one of 'how a physical process can be transformed into something non-physical in a physical system, but how the phase of being felt is attained, and how the process may pass into unfelt phases again'.

Thus, appraisal is a complex process in which two main steps can be distinguished: (a) comparing input with standards that have developed within the organism during its lifetime; (b) selecting certain general forms of behaviour in preference to other forms in accordance with the results of comparisons previously made.

Not only is progress of the overall activity monitored but progress of each bit of it is monitored as well.

A model of the psychical apparatus that pictures behaviour as a resultant of a hypothetical psychical energy that is seeking discharge was adopted by Freud almost at the beginning of his psychoanalytical work.

Although from time to time details of the psychical energy model underwent change, Freud never considered abandoning it for any other kind of model. Nor have more than a handful of other analysts. What, then, are the reasons that have led me to do so?

First, it is important to remember that the origin of Freud's model lay, not in his clinical work with patients, but in ideas he had learned previously from his teachers—the physiologist Brücke, the psychiatrist Meynert, and the physician Breuer.

Now there is nothing unscientific in utilising, for the interpretation of data, any model that seems promising; and there is therefore nothing unscientific either in Freud's introduction of his model or in his own or others' employment of it. Nevertheless, the question arises whether there may by now be an alternative better suited for the purpose in hand.

The psychical energy model is, therefore, a theoretical model brought by Freud to psychoanalysis: it is in no way a model derived by him from the practice of psychoanalysis. Secondly...

As soon as feeling is regarded as a phase of a physiological process instead of a product of it—namely a new entity metaphysically different from it—the paradox

One difficulty of exposition is that each sort of appraisal process can be conducted at any one of several levels.

It will happen but it will take time.