CONCEPT
Attachment Theory
Bowlby's synthesis of psychoanalysis, ethology, and systems theory into a framework that treats the human bond as a biological system — now the sharpest available lens for reading the AI transition as a relational crisis rather than a technical one.
Attachment theory is John Bowlby's three-decade project of grounding human bonding in evolutionary biology. Across the Attachment and Loss trilogy (1969, 1973, 1980), Bowlby argued that the infant's tie to the caregiver is not derived from feeding or secondary drive but is a primary motivational system with its own neural architecture, selected across mammalian evolution because proximity to a protective figure meant survival. The theory specifies observable behaviors (proximity-seeking, safe haven, secure base use, separation protest), the predictable sequence of responses to loss (protest, despair, detachment), and the internal working models through which early experience shapes adult relating. Its extension into the AI moment treats technological disruption not as a cognitive problem but as an activation of the ancient attachment system.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Bowlby developed the framework against fierce resistance from the psychoanalytic establishment of his time, which insisted that the infant's attachment to the mother was secondary