Attachment theory and the interfaces between mother’s love, cinematics and ciber-machines

Abstract

This article analyzes the emergence of the theory of attachment and its relation to the biological transformations introduced by Second World War, along with the incorporation of cinematics in developmental psychology. I state that the work of John Bowlby puts forth a new discursive formation in which the relationship mother-creature is explained by a sophisticated empiric/theoretical device derived from a renewed biology, namely military cybernetics. In addition, I contend that this new biology sets up a certain spectacle, through which scientific truth was shown to the public through the cinema. Both the introduction of cyber-organisms as well as the cinema, allows me to analyze Bowlby’s theory, not only as constituting a significant transformation on the discursive construction of gender and the maternal body, but also pushing forward a process of “cyborgization” within the field of developmental psychology which gradually starts to blur the line between humans and machines.