Family attachment 800 years ago

Eight centuries before John Bowlby came up with Attachment Theory, the medieval Italian philosopher priest St Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) described close relationships in a similar way. Authors still quote his insights.

In modern words, he said that some relationships, like those with our children or our parents, are so closely united with us that they’re like part of ourselves. We feel their suffering, for example, as if it is our own suffering.

He wrote from a spiritual perspective; Bowlby from an evolutionary one. Both broadened the feelings that connect in close relationships to include joy and love.

Love by any other name

In 1948, it’s said that John Bowlby didn’t adopt his wife’s idea to call his new theory “Love”. He feared professional ridicule. Public reaction too because the meaning of “love” had got more physical.

But in medieval spiritual times “love” was pure. Ahead of Mrs Bowlby, St Thomas Aquinas’s named his theory “ordo amoris”. The “order of love” says that we naturally love and care for those closest to us because our bonds are woven into our own identity. The strong feelings are of close empathy, not those of an outside observer.

Dr and Mrs Bowlby – and Attachment science since – confirm what St Thomas Aquinas said so long before they did. Love remains a given that can be taken away.