On the basis of personal reminiscences an account is given of Harlow’s role in the development of attachment theory and key notions of attachment theory are being discussed. Among other things, it is ...related how Harlow arrived at his famous research with rhesus monkeys and how this made Harlow a highly relevant figure for attachment theorist Bowlby.
From 1957 through the mid-1970s, John Bowlby, one of the founders of attachment theory, was in close personal and scientific contact with Harry Harlow. In constructing his new theory on the nature of ...the bond between children and their caregivers, Bowlby profited highly from Harlow’s experimental work with rhesus monkeys. Harlow in his turn was influenced and inspired by Bowlby’s new thinking. On the basis of the correspondence between Harlow and Bowlby, their mutual participation in scientific meetings, archival materials, and an analysis of their scholarly writings, both the personal relationship between John Bowlby and Harry Harlow and the cross-fertilization of their work are described.
Major depressive disorder is the most common mood disorder in the United States today and the need for adequate treatment has been universally desired for over a century. Harry Harlow, famous for his ...research with rhesus monkeys, was heavily criticized when he undertook his controversial experiments trying to find a solution for depression in the 1960s–1970s. His research, however, did not just evolve gradually from his earlier research into learning and into love. Recently disclosed hand‐written notes show, for the first time, the severity of Harlow's depressions as he wrote in detail about his feelings and thoughts during his stay in a mental hospital in 1968. In these notes, Harlow repeatedly vowed to put every effort into finding a cure for depression. This may, for a large part, explain why he did not stop his rigorous animal experiments where critics argue he should have, and he eventually managed to book positive results.
In this contribution, the authors give an overview of the different studies on the effect of separation and deprivation that drew the attention of many in the 1940s and 1950s. Both Harlow and Bowlby ...were exposed to and influenced by these different studies on the so called ‘hospitalization’ effect. The work of Bakwin, Goldfarb, Spitz, and others is discussed and attention is drawn to films that were used to support new ideas on the effects of maternal deprivation.
In this contribution the reciprocal influence of Harlow and Spitz concerning the consequences of maternal deprivation of monkeys and men, respectively, is described. On the basis of recently ...disclosed correspondence between Harlow and Spitz, it is argued that not only was Spitz's work on hospitalism an inspiration for Harlow to start his cloth and wire surrogate work with rhesus monkeys but, at the same time, Harlow's work was a new impetus for Spitz's work on the sexual development of (deprived) infants. It is described how the two men first established personal contact in the early 1960s, after Harlow had published his first surrogate papers, how they became close friends subsequently, and inspired each other mutually.
"Love is a wondrous state, deep, tender and rewarding." But because of its intimate and personal nature, scientists had considered love to be "an improper topic for experimental research." Thus in ...his 1958 presidential address to the American Psychological Association did Harry Harlow express concern about his fellow psychologists' lack of interest in a motive that "pervades our entire lives." In his view, psychologists were failing in their mission "to analyze all facets of human and animal behavior into their component variables." Harlow's talk, "The Nature of Love," changed the status of mother love within the walls of the laboratory and beyond. Harlow presented his experiments with rhesus monkeys and "surrogate" mothers, dolls made of cloth and wire. He showed that even when the wire mothers provided the infants with milk, the young rhesus spent much of their time clutching the cloth mother. These experiments have become legendary in the scientific community and in popular culture. According to this legend, Harlow showed that maternal care in infancy was essential for adult sexual adjustment and mental health. This work thus corroborated in nonhuman primates the views of psychoanalysts such as John Bowlby and Rene Spitz, who argued that maternal deprivation had devastating consequences for children's emotional development. Here, Vicedo analyzes the complex ways in which Harlow's research on monkeys, Lorenz's research on imprinting, and Bowlby's research on children were related and appropriated by each other and by diverse constituencies and focuses on the relation between Harlow's and Bowiby's work.
Starting in 1958, Harry Harlow published numerous research papers analyzing the emotional and social development of rhesus monkeys. This essay examines the presentation of Harlow's work in ...introductory psychology textbooks from 1958 to 1975, focusing on whether the textbooks erased the process of research, presented results without hedging, and provided a uniform account of Harlow's work and results. It argues that many textbooks were not passive vehicles of knowledge transmission; instead, they played a role similar to articles of meta-analysis and literature reviews.
Although traditional accounts of attachment theory attempted to partition the organism’s attachment and separation responses into those that were instinctive and those that were the result of the ...developmental environment, recent findings from epigenetics are indicating that no such partitioning is possible, even in principle. Rather than assuming the expression of a given behavioral trait is based on some set of instincts (as Bowlby and many of his colleagues did for attachment and separation responses), behavioral development is now seen as a self-organizing, probabilistic process in which pattern and order emerge and change as a result of ongoing co-actions among developmentally relevant components both internal (e.g., genes, hormones, neural networks) and external (e.g., temperature, diet, social interaction) to the organism. Exploring the specific prenatal and postnatal features of the mother–infant interaction system is providing a new appreciation of the complexity of the origins and maintenance of early attachment and its long-term consequences.
This essay acknowledges the seminal contribution of the founders of attachment theory and research as a paradigm shift in understanding the importance of the socioemotional foundation of ...developmental processes. However, it is surprising that attachment theory has been treated as a closed system by its students with remarkable resistance to change and further development of theory and methodology. Especially three dimensions are identified that would help to advance attachment theory as a valid conception also for the future. The context specificity of evolutionary theorizing, the different socialization goals and parenting strategies across cultures and the new insights in infant development need to be taken into consideration in order to develop a valid theory of socioemotional development as the culturally informed solution of universal developmental tasks.
The Price of Solitude Stein, Abby
The Journal of psychohistory,
04/2009, Letnik:
36, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
A raft of empirical evidence over the years has supported the idea that the formation of social bonds is integral to the satisfaction of all kinds of individual needs, and that the rupturing of those ...ties can be a death sentence for personal happiness. ...religious and self help tomes have long capitalized on people's search for meaning and community, as witnessed by the ongoing success of books like Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking (1996, orig. 1952) and Warren's The Purpose Driven Life (2007, orig. 2002). Treatment providers who walk the halls of foundling hospitals, prisons, juvenile detention facilities, and in-patient psychiatric units acknowledge the catastrophic consequences of "true" loneliness all the time, the kind that mires its hosts in paralyzing depression, elective mutism, alcoholism, or dooms them to twisted attempts at attachment through rape or murder.
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