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"So far as love or affection is concerned, psychologists have failed..." -Harry Harlow, 1958

The fundamental nature of human existence is dependence. We are a social species unlike any other, with a uniquely prolonged infancy and childhood (familial dependency). We come into the world in pairs, the lesser partner of a maternal dyad. Attempts at self-understanding prior to Freud focused on the finished product, the adult, ignoring the unique and powerful developmental process than actually makes us human.

For hundreds of years the developmental process was misconceived as experts presumed physical needs supersede psychological ones; food, water, and shelter trump affection and attachment. For 200 years the U.S. government and charitable groups sponsored orphanages that provided for the physical needs of a child without meeting the basic needs of childhood. A human mind can develop only under the direct influence of developed minds. By the end of the Civil War 600 orphanages were in full swing in the U.S, and all experienced early deaths for most children warehoused there. In Europe the situation was no better. In Florence's Hospital of the Innocents, ten thousand infants died before their first birthday. Every child in the care of New York institutions died before the age of two, in all but one home. Philadelphia institutions did not have an exceptional home: every admittant died.

What was killing innocent parentless children? Scientists such as Pasteur, Fleming, and Jenner had recently identified microscopic pathogens as the source of much of the world's diseases, but it was not microbes who threatened most children but adults and their response to microbial threat. The ultimate infant killing machine was isolation. Quarantine. Orphanages isolated children from each other and caregivers lest infection spread through human contact, and in so doing, neglect was institutionalized and spread throughout the industrial world.

Experts of the time only made matters worse. At the turn of last century Dr. Luther Holt, the Dr Spock of his day, insisted that parents avoid closeness with their child and railed against the "vicious practice" of rocking a child in a cradle, or picking them up when they cried or handling them too often. Affectionate contact was especially hazardous. He bitterly opposed the common practice of small children sharing the parent's bed, a custom since time immemorial, and only now be recommended again by some pediatricians. Infants and small children should sleep in separate rooms, according to Holt. Good hygiene was good child care. John B Watson, president of the American Psychological Association, and founder of behaviorism, led a crusade against affection. "Mother love is a dangerous instrument," he warned. Mothering warps the "overkissed child." He envisioned a utopian future in which baby farms raised children untouched by human hands. Affection was not only unnecessary, he argued, but detrimental. Although Aldous Huxley satirized this warped vision in Brave New World, Watson was hailed for his efforts.

Rearing practices might have continued in a bleak Watsonian landscape had politics not intervened. World War II shook everyone's confidence in science and human nature, and it also brought forth the new phenomenon of a refugee child. In England and elsewhere parents sent children to the countryside to keep them out of harm's way. There, well-fed, well-cared-for, but heart-broken, many children became withdrawn and depressed. Being separated from parents endangered children at a deeper level. The parent-child relationship needed to be re-examined.

In the 1940s Harry Bakwin, a New York pediatrician, documented how absence of mothering devastated a child's well-being. He changed signs in his hospital from "Wash your hands twice before entering this ward" to "Do not enter this nursery without picking up a baby." Parents had been discouraged or barred from visiting sick children but Bakwin won approval for mothers to stay in the same room with a child, and this led to a significant drop in fatal infections. The value of human contact was not lost on him, but he was ahead of his time, an oasis in the dry desert of American behaviorism and hygiene. One-hour visits a week were the norm for most hospitals and these policies remained in place for decades to come.

In 1945 Rene Spitz compared children in a typical orphanage to those in a chaotic prison nursery. In the former, cribs were separated from each other by sheets, a form of solitary confinement to stave off infection. In the latter, children shared a common room filled with mothers (convicts), toys, noise, and germs. During Spitz' investigation 23 of 88 children in the orphanage died from infection but not one of the 90 children in the prison nursery was lost. Love was necessary for survival and the perils of loneliness were quantifiable. Spitz filmed children in one of the foundling homes. A few weeks of isolation transformed happy precocious children into emotionless automatons. The film closed with a cue card that read: "The cure: Give Mother Back to Baby." The initial reaction to his work? Concentrated fury-- surely 50 years of psychiatric wisdom could not be so wrong!

But it was. According to Freud whoever held the bottle held the child. If the mammary relationship was interrupted, a child reacted sexually and exhibited castration fear or rage against his parents. It makes interesting fiction, but Freud was not alone in misconceiving childhood. Neuroscientists of the time concluded that babies could not see faces (1942), were unaware of the environment (1948), were a collection of reflexes only (1952); that they couldn't see color until age three (1964) and were functionally decorticated or brainless (1964). An empty-headed infant was the dominant model for half a century. But when Harlow studied infant monkeys, he discovered anything but an empty-headed creature. Infant monkeys had incredible needs for touch, attachment, love, safety, security, exploration, excitement, and resources to satisfy them. But when needs went unsatified, results were grim. "Learning to love, like learning to walk or talk, can't be put off too long without crippling effects," he wrote.

Harry Harlow (born Harry Israel) started academic life as a rat researcher at a time when the American psychological community was knee-deep in behaviorism and running out of rats to test. After his dissertation Harlow abandoned vermin, as he called them, and opted for a smarter species to experiment upon, the cheapest primate he could find. Rhesus macaques were still expensive compared to rats so he didn't sacrifice an animal when an experiment was finished but kept them around for future projects. Such frugality led him to his first discovery: prior learning facilitated future learning. His monkeys got quicker and quicker at solving puzzles and unlike rats, monkeys would solve puzzles for no reward at all. Curiosity often ruled their behavior. But what interested Harlow was not intelligence but love and attachment.

His first surrogate mother study included eight rhesus monkeys. In each cage were two "mothers," one of chicken wire, one of cloth. In four cages a cloth mother held a feeding bottle while in the other four, a wire mother sported the milk. Harlow measured how long each infant monkey spent with either surrogate. As he observed, monkeys clung and climbed on the cloth mother for up to 18 hours a day regardless if she bore the bottle or not. Being fed formed no emotional attachment, proving Freud wrong on this point.

But Harlow also explored a darker side of love. He built "monster mothers" to observe the effect on infants, mechanical devices that threw off helpless newborns like an angry bucking bronco. And what did these poor souls do? Did they run from "mother" or avoid her sudden jerks? No, they clung tighter, laying anchor in the only harbor they knew. Years later when Harlow was criticized for his apparent lack of ethical concern for the animals in his care he replied, "For every mistreated monkey there exists a million mistreated children." But looking backward is easy. Ironically it is his studies and his rigorous approach that forced us to recognize the deleterious effects of social isolation and emotional neglect, and understand in hindsight the tragic consequences to his subjects. Love builds the young brain, and the lack of love destroys it.

Deborah Blum chronicles the life of Harlow in "Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection" and along the way captures the transformations of psychological investigation across the 20th century, including such notables as Thorndike, Freud, Skinner, Ainsworth, Bruno Bettelheim, and Harlow's first graduate student, Abraham Maslow. It is a book to recommend to anyone entering behavioral science. After reading it one cannot help but wonder why love remains a minor player in a scientific understanding of the human mind. It is the very nature of the human mind.

Harry Harlow died in 1981.

-DK

News & Reviews NEW BOOKS

Head Trauma: Basic, Preclinical, and Clinical Directions
by Leonard P. Miller, et al
Pathophysiological mechanisms of brain trauma are reviewed and discussed. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471360155/eegspectrum

Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV and Beyond, 2nd Edition
by Theodore Millon
Description of 15 personality prototypes and 60 subtypes, in a historical framework. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/047101186X/eegspectrum

Fundamental Neuroscience, 2nd Edition
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Comprehensive textbook that both graduate and undergraduate students. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0126603030/eegspectrum

Sleep and Aging, Volume 17
Mark P. Mattson (Editor)
Sleep in aging and age-related disease, from prevention to treatment of various sleep disorders. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0444518762/eegspectrum

Cognitive Vulnerability to Emotional Disorders
by LB Alloy, JH Riskind (Eds)
Cognitive factors that mediate a spectrum of emotional disorders. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805838287/eegspectrum

Executive Function In Children, Adolescents, And Adults With ADHD
by Weyandt
Special issue concerning executive functions in ADHD. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805895035/eegspectrum

Cortical Function: a View from the Thalamus, Volume 149
by V. A. Casagrande, et al
Role of thalamocortical communication in cognition and attention and its role in communication between cortical areas --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0444516794/eegspectrum

Childhood Anxiety Disorders
by DC Beidel, SM Turner
Recently published guide to research and treatment of childhood anxiety disorders. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415947979/eegspectrum

Inner Presence : Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon
by Antti Revonsuo
A "world simulation metaphor" used to explain the dreaming brain and visual consciousness. --www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262182491/eegspectrum

ADHD and early-onset substance use disorders. : Treating ADHD during childhood may prevent the development of substance use disorder. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16262592

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Self-regulation after traumatic brain injury : Summary of intervention literature and principles of self-monitoring. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16278796

Sex differences in the brain: implications for explaining autism. : Extreme male brain theory with specific aspects of autistic neuroanatomy. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16272115

Correlating the alpha rhythm to BOLD using simultaneous EEG/fMRI : Inter-subject variability of the resting state needs to be addressed in functional neuroimaging. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16290018

Neuroimaging study of sex differences in neuropathology of cocaine abuse. : Gender differences were found in drug cue and stress trials, with men showing different activation patterns during drug cues and women during stress. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16290890

Anatomical Differences in the Mirror Neuron System and Social Cognition Network in Autism. : Cortical thinning of the mirror neuron system and other areas involved in emotion recognition and social cognition is observed in autism. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16306324

Pathophysiologic aspects of major depression following traumatic brain injury. : Depression symptoms cluster into poor mood and distorted self-attitude, low motivation and anhedonia, subjective cognitive complaints, and hyperactive/disinhibited behavior. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16304485

Cerebral blood flow pattern under psychological stress. : Psychological stress induces negative emotion and vigilance. The ventral right prefrontal cortex is central to the stress response. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16306271

The other day I watched three people go from nearly complete power to absolute vulnerability in a matter of minutes. It wasn't an episode of Donald Trump's The Apprentice nor a soap opera I was watching, but fellow drivers on the streets of New York.

Most behavioral domains are opaque. They involve a complex array of seen and unseen influences that affect both decision and outcome, but driving is transparent, or nearly so, and is ripe for psychological analysis. Driving is but a series of naked transactions, readily identified to participants and observers alike. Driving involves transitions from power to weakness and back again. How we drive may reflect who we are and how we expect the world to be. Are we afraid to make left hand turns across oncoming traffic? Perhaps this lack of autonomy stems from unresolved issues of childhood ... well, that may be mapping Freud to driving habits too nakedly, but you get the idea. Personality conflicts are hard to hide on the road. Whether one speeds or stays below the limit? Does inclimant weather influence our choices? Do we use the brake too often, give others too much or too little space -- it all reveals our inner self. In fact every disorder may first appear as a driving habit: egocentric parking, schizotypal offramp behavior, neurotic rearview mirror checking, depressed acceleration practices. Our emotional and social brain is a large part of our driving brain.

Position, speed, and intent. That is life in a nutshell.

Who knows? In the future a trip to the psychiatrist might also involve a trip to the DMV. Get in the car so we can check under the hood. -DK