John Bowlby's famous study, Child Care and the Growth of Love, has become a classic of psychology. Both in it and elsewhere there is plenty of evidence that a child's early experiences of being separated from its mother underlie much psychological distress and illness in later life. In this Pelican Dr. Bowlby examines the processes that take place in attachment and separation and shows how recent experimental studies of children provide us with a recognizable behaviour pattern which is confirmed by discoveries in the biological sciences. Human attachment is seen as an instinctive response to the need for protection against predators, and one as important for survival as nutrition and reproduction.