Educational Media Reviews Online

This DVD describes the life and work of Mary D. Ainsworth, Ph.D., one of the most important researchers of attachment theory. The biographical information explains how Ainsworth’s work stemmed from her personal search to understand and have attachments in her own life. The focus of her work is described by the narrator as the “scientific study of love and how it develops.” Ainsworth was heavily influenced by the work of John Bowlby, M.D., who realized that human attachments are formed, based on the tie between infant and caregiver. A primary focus of this DVD is Ainsworth’s extensive observations of interactions between infants and their primary caregivers (usually mothers), in both natural and experimental situations. The behaviors and patterns discovered by Ainsworth through these studies, and the implications on human love relationships throughout the course of a lifetime, were a significant contribution to psychology.

The DVD is narrated by Robert Marvin, Ph.D., now Director of the Mary D. Ainsworth Child-Parent Attachment Clinic, University of Virginia Medical Center. The quality is good and includes personal historical photographs of Ainsworth, film and animation of experiments from the Baltimore Study, photographs of Ainsworth working amongst mothers and their children in Uganda from the Uganda Study, and more. The narrator has a particularly valuable perspective having worked with Ainsworth for many years beginning as an undergraduate psychology student.

The progression of Ainsworth’s research and career is well documented in this short DVD. It ends with a brief adult attachment interview and explanation, which seemed underdeveloped. Adding another few minutes on adult attachment issues, discussing theories and successful solutions further, would have brought the topic full-circle. Recommended – particularly for college students in Psychology.