Strains of Attachment: John Bowlby’s Theory and William Faulkner’s Pylon

Abstract:Employing Bowlby’s attachment theory, this article traces the prescience of Faulkner’s Pylon. In March 1935, Faulkner’s novel—a tale of a barnstorming pilot, his wife, and their parentally deprived son—appears in print. That same year, Bowlby reads Ian Suttie’s The Origins of Love and Hate, whose approach to psychological maturation offers a Darwinian alternative to Freud’s doctrine of drives. Bowlby develops this alternative perspective into attachment theory. Like Bowlby, Faulkner at once distances himself from Freudianism and appreciates Darwinism, with Bowlbian concepts aiding the exploration of Faulkner’s psychosocial insights in Pylon and the novel reciprocating in illuminating those concepts.