The nature of love: Harlow, Bowlby and Bettelheim on affectionless mothers

Harry Harlow, famous for his experiments with rhesus monkeys and cloth and wire mothers, was visited by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby and by child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim in 1958. They made similar observations of Harlow’s monkeys, yet their interpretations were strikingly different. Bettelheim saw Harlow’s wire mother as a perfect example of the ‘refrigerator mother’, causing autism in her child, while Bowlby saw Harlow’s results as an explanation of how socio-emotional development was dependent on responsiveness of the mother to the child’s biological needs. Bettelheim’s solution was to remove the mother, while Bowlby specifically wanted to involve her in treatment. Harlow was very critical of Bettelheim, but evaluated Bowlby’s work positively.

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‘We Were All Very Sick and Very Stupid’

Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970 ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198862895.003.0002 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 20-47

Author(s):

Lise Butler

Keyword(s):

Social Science ◽

Labour Party ◽

Political Organization ◽

The Political ◽

Left Wing ◽

Social Scientists ◽

Policy Makers ◽

John Bowlby ◽

Child Psychologist ◽

Social Importance

This chapter discusses the Conference on the Psychological and Sociological Problems of Modern Socialism held at University College Oxford in 1945. This event featured prominent left-wing policy makers, intellectuals, and social scientists, including the MP Evan Durbin, the political theorist G. D. H. Cole, the writer and politician Margaret Cole, the child psychologist John Bowlby, the historian R. H. Tawney, and Michael Young, who was then the Secretary of the Labour Party Research Department. The conference reflected multiple strands of inter-war and mid-twentieth century political thought and social science which emphasized the political and social importance of small groups, notably through guild socialist arguments for pluralistic forms of political organization, and theories about human attachment drawn from child psychology. The views expressed at the conference reflected a sense that active and participatory democracy was not just morally right but psychologically necessary to prevent popular political radicalization, limit the appeal of totalitarianism, and promote peaceful civil society. The chapter concludes by noting that the events of the conference, and the intellectual influences that it represented, would subsequently shape Michael Young’s project to promote social science within the Labour Party during the later years of the Attlee government.

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The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott

10.1093/med:psych/9780190271343.001.0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Medical Journal ◽

World War Ii ◽

British Medical Journal ◽

Corporal Punishment ◽

Emotional Development ◽

Psychoanalytic Theory ◽

Theory And Practice ◽

World War ◽

John Bowlby

Volume 2, 1939–45, covers the years of World War II. It contains an introduction by the late senior child psychotherapist, Christopher Reeves. The volume includes letters to colleagues, including one to the British Medical Journal with Emanuel Miller and John Bowlby regarding the war and children; a report on war work; Winnicott’s first article on aggression; articles on delinquency and corporal punishment; his contribution to the Controversial Discussions of the British Psychoanalytical Society; texts of his early BBC broadcasts; and the very significant paper, ‘Primitive Emotional Development’, a continually relevant statement of his own evolving position in regard to psychoanalytic theory and practice.

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Love Is Not Enough: Bruno Bettelheim, Infantile Autism, and Psychoanalytic Childhood

Understanding Autism ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691150468.003.0003 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Chloe Silverman

Keyword(s):

Research Program ◽

Ego Development ◽

Infantile Autism ◽

University Of Chicago ◽

Autistic Children ◽

Postwar America ◽

Treatment Practices ◽

Child Psychologist ◽

Bruno Bettelheim ◽

The University

This chapter describes what happened when the child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago, designed a research program for training counselors based on the idea that autism represented a form of halted ego development. Bettelheim popularized psychotherapy in postwar America, and especially the view of autistic children and their families that has remained both a reference and a foil for generations of parents. The story of Bettelheim's involvement with autism illustrates the ambivalent and sometimes tragic qualities of the affective, institutional, and professional commitments that drive research on autism as well as treatment practices. The chapter examines Bettelheim's conviction that one might temper reason with love, but that love was often “not enough” unless combined with interpretive acumen and clear-eyed introspection.

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Refrigerator Mothers and Sick Little Boys: Bruno Bettelheim, Eugenics and the De-Pathologization of Jewish Identity

Disability Studies Quarterly ◽

10.18061/dsq.v34i3.3312 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 34 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Griffin Jaye Epstein

Keyword(s):

North America ◽

Jewish Identity ◽

Concentration Camp ◽

Ashkenazi Jewish ◽

Jewish Immigrant ◽

Disabled People ◽

Nazi Concentration Camp ◽

Child Psychologist ◽

Bruno Bettelheim

Child psychologist and Nazi concentration camp survivor Bruno Bettelheim’s influential theories of autism reveal a startling connection between Jewish identity, the medicalization of disability, colonial eugenics and race-making practices over the 20th century in North America. Using Bettelheim’s life and work as a case-study, this paper explores Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant complicity in a whitened colonial landscape through the lens of Disability Studies. It asks the question: can we be more accountable to our disabled identities – and to those disabled people who have come before us – if we learn how our families, our identities, our very selves have been complicit in medicalization and violence? Keywords: madness, race, whiteness, Jewish identity, eugenics, psychiatry

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Individual differences, social attention, and the history of the social motivation hypotheses of autism

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x18002509 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 42 ◽

Author(s):

Peter C. Mundy

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Early Development ◽

Emotional Development ◽

Social Motivation ◽

Social Attention ◽

Social Emotional Development ◽

Social Emotional ◽

Precise Understanding ◽

The Social ◽

History Of

Abstract The stereotype of people with autism as unresponsive or uninterested in other people was prominent in the 1980s. However, this view of autism has steadily given way to recognition of important individual differences in the social-emotional development of affected people and a more precise understanding of the possible role social motivation has in their early development.

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The Growth of Herpesvirus mulatto in Human Fibroblast

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100051232 ◽

1974 ◽

Vol 32 ◽

pp. 244-245

Author(s):

Glennelle Washington ◽

Philip P. McGrath ◽

Peter R. Graze ◽

Ivor Royston

Keyword(s):

Rhesus Monkey ◽

Microscopic Study ◽

Electron Microscopic Study ◽

Peripheral Blood ◽

Human Fibroblast ◽

Rhesus Monkeys ◽

Human Fibroblasts ◽

Electron Microscopic ◽

Specific Antisera ◽

Peripheral Blood Leucocytes

Herpes-like viruses were isolated from rhesus monkey peripheral blood leucocytes when co-cultivated with WI-38 cells. The virus was originally designated rhesus leucocyte-associated herpesvirus (LAHV) and subsequently called Herpesvirus mulatta (HVM). The original isolations were from juvenile rhesus monkeys shown to be free of antibody to rhesus cytomegalic virus. The virus could only be propagated in human or simian fibroblasts. Use of specific antisera developed from HVM showed no relationship between this virus and other herpesviruses. An electron microscopic study was undertaken to determine the morphology of Herpesvirus mulatta (HVM) in infected human fibroblasts.

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Nucleolar Segregation and Chronic Methanol Intoxication

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100063718 ◽

1969 ◽

Vol 27 ◽

pp. 360-361

Author(s):

Julio H. Garcia ◽

Janice P. Van Zandt

Keyword(s):

Body Weight ◽

Methyl Alcohol ◽

Rhesus Monkeys ◽

Repeated Administration ◽

Serum Levels ◽

Methanol Intoxication ◽

Intragastric Tube ◽

Nucleolar Segregation

Repeated administration of methyl alcohol to Rhesus monkeys (Maccaca mulata) by intragastric tube resulted in ultrastructural abnormalities of hepatocytes, which persisted in one animal twelve weeks after discontinuation of the methyl alcohol regime. With dosages ranging between 3.0 to 6.0 gms. of methanol per kg. of body weight, the serum levels attained within a few hours averaged approximately 475 mg. per cent.

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Evaluation of hippocampus in rhesus monkeys after chronic (1-year) inhalation exposure to marijuana: I. Electron microscopy

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100159539 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 48 (3) ◽

pp. 398-399

Author(s):

A.M. Andrews ◽

S.W. Wilson ◽

A.C. Scallet ◽

S.F. Ali ◽

J. Bailey ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Synaptic Vesicles ◽

Rhesus Monkeys ◽

Low Dose ◽

Inhalation Exposure ◽

Synaptic Cleft ◽

High Dose ◽

Withdrawal Time ◽

Treatment Groups ◽

Ultrastructural Evidence ◽

Male Rhesus

Exposure of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) to marijuana via inhalation or to intravenous delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), reportedly caused ultrastructural evidence of increased synaptic width. Chronic marijuana smoke in a single rhesus monkey examined after a six month withdrawal time caused ultrastructure changes in the septal, hippocampal and amygdala regions; the synaptic cleft was widened, electron opaque material was found in the cleft and in the pre- and postsynaptic regions, with some clumping of the synaptic vesicles. The objective of our study was to assess neuropathological alterations produced by chronic inhalation of marijuana smoke.Nineteen male rhesus monkeys, 3-5 years of age and weighing 3-8 kg, were divided into four treatment groups: a) sham control, b) placebo smoke (7 days/ week) c) low dose marijuana (2 times/week with 5 days/week sham) and d) high dose marijuana (7 times/week). A smoke exposure consisted of smoke from one cigarette (2.6% THC) burned down to 10 mm butt length. Smoke was administered via smoke generator (ADL II, Arthur D. Little, Inc. Cambridge, MA) and nose-mouth only masks (local production) equipped with one-way valves.

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