Ian D. Suttie

Rejects classical Freudian anti-humanitarian and reductive "nothing but" message. He linked with evolutionary and anthropological approaches. And was a major influence on John Bowlby. His key ideas were that:

a) mother-child bond is non-sexual and loving

b) healthily psychic development depends on how separation from the mother occurs

c) focus of early childhood is coming to terms with independence and not genital sexuality which is for later childhood

d) the notion of sexual rivalry with the father is a fiction, - the child is jealous of anyone that comes between child and mother

e) the great range of human activities including religion, science and culture are autonomous activities and not derivatives or sublimations of the sexual impulse.… (mer)

Ian Suttie, whose book The Origins of Love and Hate was influential in the thirties had contributed to Bowlby’s views on social psychology. The Origins of Love and Hate proposed a primary bond between mother and child, unrelated to infantile sexuality an idea which Bowlby was to develop and put at the heart of Attachment Theory. This book was extremely influential in the development of the British Object Relations school of psychoanalytic theory and practice.

In this book, Suttie first described what he called "the taboo on tenderness".… (mer)