Joyce Robertson (27 March 1919 – 12 April 2013) was a British psychiatric social worker, child behavioural researcher, childcare pioneer and pacifist, who was most notable for changing attitudes to the societally acceptable, institutionalised care and hospitalisation of young children, that was prevalent.

In 1965, both of them moved to the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations to work with John Bowlby on the Young Children in Brief Separation project and the development of attachment theory.

[2] Later in her career, Robertson worked with her husband to produce a series of celebrated documentary films that highlighted the reaction of small children who were separated from their parents.

[4] During World War II, Joyce and James were conscientious objectors, and during the late 1940's both worked at the Pacifist Service Unit in East London with the victims of the bombing.

[4] Knowing that Robertson came from a large family, and as she was the only Briton in the war nurseries, Freud employed her and asked her to research the different methods of childcare, determine what types of practice were in use[5] and write detailed observations on index cards.

Freud found that Robertson's hearty nature enabled her to connect with the small baby who responded to the care.

[3] In 1948, her husband James Robertson joined the Tavistock Clinic to make observations of the behaviour of small children.

[12] When her husband and Bowlby showed her the film, it was Joyce who made the critical breakthrough in realising why Laura was not crying,[1] being a desperate attempt by the tiny girl to control her feelings.

[1] Robertson kept a diary of the event, which resulted in a paper entitled A Mother's Observations on the Tonsillectomy of Her Four-Year-Old Daughter.

[15] In summarising the paper, Joyce concluded that her presence and responsiveness to questions enabled Jean to cope with the fear of hospitalisation.

[1] However, the entries in the diary indicate that even for a three-day hospitalisation and operation that was both successful and remarkably common from a medical perspective, it filled Jean's life for six months.

[15] In the early 1960s, her husband James and John Bowlby, both working at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, began to disagree on the factors involved in separating children from their parents.

[19] She criticised his approach stating: Freud stressed the lack of relevant data in which to draw conclusions: In a paper entitled Brief separations, psychologist Christoph M. Heinicke and psychiatric social worker Ilse J Westheimer, both colleagues of Bowlby at the clinic, discussed their observations, stating that their data could not determine the influence of institutional factors, including that of multiple caretakers.

[21] In Bowlby's book, Attachment and Loss,[22] there is a passing reference to the complexities of the institutional situation, and a disappointing emphasis on the assertion that regardless of age and conditions of care, the young child's response to separation is usually the mourning sequence initiated by acute distress: The subjects in the various studies differ, e.g. there is a variance in age, the type of home varies, the type of hospital or clinic they visit varies, the type of care they receive and the length of time they at the away from home.

James and Joyce decided to try to determine the influence of variables on the behaviour of healthy young children during a ten-day separation from the mother.

The couple decided to become foster parents to a series of young children by providing 24-hour support and make written and filmed observations of their reactions.

James made a proposal to Bowlby, who at the time was director of the Tavistock clinic, for a new project that would look at separation in young children in much greater detail.

In 1963, Bowlby assigned £1000 for the new unit and in the same year, Robertson joined her husband at the Tavistock clinic as a research associate to work on a project that would be known as Young Children in Brief Separation.

[23] The purpose of the project was to study the influence of factors such as age, level of maturity and object constancy, previous parent-child relationships and quality of substitute care, on the responses of young children to separation from their mother, seeking to identify optimal substitute care.

During the 1950's, James Robertson had used a 16 mm movie camera to study the reactions of young children who were admitted to hospital for treatment, and he planned to make 20 minute Cinéma vérité recordings every day for later study..[23] One child was to be observed over a nine-day period while staying in a residential nursery, where staff were professional and kind but could not and would not provide substitute mothering or take note and consideration of individual needs of the child.

[24] The four children that were to be fostered were Kate, Thomas, Jane and Lucy whose mothers were going into hospital for a birth of a second child with no other family member available to care for them.

[26] The Robertsons believed that at 17 months Jane was too young to assimilate Joyce or to retain a clear image of her mother.

Jane became extraordinary attached to Joyce and remained in the state even when she went home where she had to share her mother with a new baby.

In the film he displays his emotions by mixing both affection and aggression towards Joyce and clearly showing his anxiety at the situation.

[4][1] During their time at the centre, they continued to publish high quality articles, with a focus on adoption and fostering[30] and as well as promoting their films.