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Infant rhesus monkey with cloth and wire mother surrogates (Harlow, 1959: 76) (Courtesy of Harlow Primate Laboratory, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Source publication
Harlow deserves a place in the early history of evolutionary psychiatry but not, as he is commonly presented, because of his belief in the instinctual nature of the mother-infant dyad. Harlow's work on the significance of peer relationships led him to appreciate the evolutionary significance of separate affectional systems. Over time, Harlow distan...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... four of them were placed with the two surrogates, and the cloth mother was fitted with a bottle that provided milk. In the next trial, the conditions for the other four babies were reversed: the milk bottle hung from the wire surrogate (Figure 1). But the milk seemed to make little difference. ...
Citations
... Harlow argued physical contact constituted a primary need for monkeys (Harlow & Zimmermann, 1959) and believed children's attachment to soft objects, like teddy bears, is due to the tactile comfort provided by them (Harlow, 1964). He argued that multiple sources of social reinforcers, such as interactions with both mothers and peers, serve as a safeguard for children against poor mothering or poor friendships, enabling them to acquire adequate social behaviors (Vicedo, 2010). ...
... Harlow would eventually reject both attachment theory and critical periods of learning (Suomi et al., 2008;Vicedo, 2010). He believed psychoanalysts overly emphasized mother-child relationships at the expense of child-peer relationships (Harlow, 1964). ...
... He believed psychoanalysts overly emphasized mother-child relationships at the expense of child-peer relationships (Harlow, 1964). Rhesus monkeys need affection and comfort, with the best results obtained for the infant from a combination of mother and peer interactions (Harlow, 1969;Ruppenthal et al., 1974;Vicedo, 2010). The infants who only interacted with their actual mothers had difficulty interacting with peers (Harlow, 1964;Harlow & Harlow, 1962), highlighting that a strong parental relationship does not necessarily result in normal social development. ...
This paper analyzes the social drive, from the shared foundation of behavioral psychology, ethology, and attachment theory. It explores how the social drive has been considered a secondary or acquired drive and identifies the original advocates for this perspective, while outlining their prerequisites for primary drives. This provides a framework for empirical investigation which include 1) having a physiological component, 2) survival value for the species, 3) not relying on pairing with other primary reinforcers, and 4) displaying covariation with behavior based on satiation and deprivation. The paper gradually moves from older studies to modern ones, demonstrating that the social drive fulfills all criteria, by utilizing older empirical studies on isolation, bad rearing, neonatal social reinforceability, as well as modern research on social deprivation/satiation and loneliness. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of this reclassification on existing psychological theories , and its potential to influence future psychotherapeutic treatments.
... Overall, this study emphasises the importance of social relationships and physical contact in both monkeys and humans, and reminds us that having good relationships with others and getting lots of hugs and cuddles is very important for our well-being. [Vicedo M., 2010] And it is studies like these which have opened doors for other studies, for example a review done to assess the way humans and animals are linked, enforcing the original predication that humans and animals are not all that different, which then extended to people with ASD. Affective touch in the context of development, oxytocin signalling, and autism by Qin Li et al. ...
This comprehensive systematic literature review explores the profound effects of expressive touch on physical and emotional pain, shedding light on its potential as a therapeutic intervention in mental health settings. The review begins by establishing the parallels between physical and emotional pain, highlighting the shared neurobiological mechanisms involved and the role of endorphins in alleviating both types of pain. It further examines the physiological and psychological benefits of expressive touch, including the release of endorphins and oxytocin. The review delves into the animal kingdom, focusing on allogrooming as a predominantly social behaviour, providing evidence for touch's importance in social bonding. Additionally, it emphasizes the integral role of touch in building trust, reducing anxiety, and soothing trauma and grief among humans.
The review then investigates the utilisation of touch in inpatient mental health settings, evaluating its efficacy and limitations. It underscores the need to address the challenges associated with the implementation of touch-based interventions, particularly the lack of proper training and ambiguous policies that hinder accessibility and inclusivity. By synthesizing existing research and offering insights into the effectiveness of touch-based interventions, this review aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding of expressive touch as a therapeutic modality and pave the way for improved practices and policies in mental health care.
... Bowlby's meeting with Harlow would strengthen their understanding of the effects of separation and they would refer to each other's work , even though Harlow would move away from some of Bowlby's ideas later on in his career (Vicedo, 2009(Vicedo, , 2010. ...
... Harlow was now becoming increasingly optimistic about the development of therapeutic techniques for treating depression in people by the generalization of the research findings to human therapists: "The ROSMALEN ET AL. | 13 psychotherapeutic principles of avoidance of social fears and the inculcation of gradual stepwise social interaction will doubtless eventually be discovered by the psychiatrists" ("The autobiography of a laboratory," undated manuscript, Harlow's personal papers). In his experiments, Harlow clearly showed the importance and therapeutic effect of social relations (Vicedo, 2010). Harlow considered both social relations and the understanding, accepting attitude of the monkey therapists important aspects of the successful treatment of depression, which he hypothesized to be helpful in the treatment of deprived or depressed infants and children (Blum, 2002; Analysis Analyzed, undated manuscript, Harlow's personal papers). ...
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.
... With puberty, the biological beginning of adolescence, the need to stay close to a caregiver is increasingly replaced by the need to join a peer group. Even before puberty, interaction with peers is fundamental for the proper functioning of mental processes (Pellis and Pellis, 2007;Vicedo, 2010), as considered above. With the beginning of adolescence the urge for social dominance, which already had its appearance with the Adrenarche (Del Giudice et al., 2009), now acquires particular importance (Weisfeld, 1999;Hawley, 2011), as a tool of sexual selection and to drive the adolescent away from the family environment (Weisfeldt and Woodward, 2004). ...
Human development has become particularly complex during the evolution. In this complexity, adolescence is an extremely important developmental stage. Adolescence is characterized by biological and social changes that create the prerequisites to psychopathological problems, including both substance and non-substance addictive behaviors. Central to the dynamics of the biological changes during adolescence are the synergy between sexual and neurophysiological development, which activates the motivational/emotional systems of Dominance/Submission. The latter are characterized by the interaction between the sexual hormones, the dopaminergic system and the stress axis (HPA). The maturation of these motivational/emotional systems requires the integration with the phylogenetically more recent Attachment/CARE Systems, which primarily have governed the subject’s relationships until puberty. The integration of these systems is particularly complex in the human species, due to the evolution of the process of competition related to sexual selection: from a simple fight between two individuals (of the same genus and species) to a struggle for the acquisition of a position in rank and the competition between groups. The latter is an important evolutionary acquisition and believed to be the variable that has most contributed to enhancing the capacity for cooperation in the human species. The interaction between competition and cooperation, and between competition and attachment, characterizes the entire human relational and emotional structure and the unending work of integration to which the BrainMind is involved. The beginning of the integration of the aforementioned motivational/emotional systems is currently identified in the prepubertal period, during the juvenile stage, with the development of the Adrenarche—the so-called Adrenal Puberty. This latter stage is characterized by a low rate of release of androgens, the hormones released by the adrenal cortex, which activate the same behaviors as those observed in the PLAY system. The Adrenarche and the PLAY system are biological and functional prerequisites of adolescence, a period devoted to learning the difficult task of integrating the phylogenetically ancient Dominance/Submission Systems with the newer Attachment/CARE Systems. These systems accompany very different adaptive goals which can easily give rise to mutual conflict and can in turn make the balance of the BrainMind precarious and vulnerable to mental suffering.
... In another set of experiments, he designed a home-like space for a primate community. Harlow's interpretation of his findings moved from supporting popular attachment theories to, in his later theory, decentralization of the role of the mother in children's mental development in favor of a diversity of affectional systems (Vicedo 2010). In other words, the biological mother was not indispensable: a cloth mother would do and so would a male scientist. ...
Alfred Russell Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago, published in 1869, is a classic text in natural history and the theory of evolution. Amidst heroic hunting narratives and picturesque descriptions of local fauna and flora, stands out a curious episode in which Wallace describes adopting a baby orangutan, whose mother he had killed. Wallace, a British naturalist and collector, cultivated an affectionate relationship with the orphaned orangutan, often referring to her as his “baby.” This paper examines how the orangutan was transformed from being a moving target for museum display, to a beloved companion but also a scientific specimen. In this process, Wallace redesigned his colonial bungalow to a space that combined domestic settings with engineered nature-like environments, a familiar construction in later primate research. I use Wallace’s adoption episode to discuss how affect and care were interwoven into the exploitative relations of British naturalists and physiologists and the animals they studied. The account of Wallace’s idiosyncratic relationship with the orangutan is augmented with additional documentation of the close relationships of scientists with research animals, staged as familial kinship. The emergence of the “laboratory pet” demonstrates how the production of knowledge, the sharing of households, and human-animal emotional ties were interwoven in early biomedical research.
... In contrast, Harlow's evaluation of Bowlby's work was much more positive. As we have shown elsewhere (Van der Horst et al., 2008), Harlow was for some time significantly influenced by Bowlby's thinking (Vicedo, 2010) and tried to design his rhesus work to support Bowlby's new theoretical framework of infant-mother attachment. In two experiments on mother-infant separation, Harlow modelled his work on the human separation syndrome described by Robertson and Bowlby (1952). ...
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.
... It has also resulted in real harm; based on his decree that schizophrenia was brought on by latent homosexualitybased, as usual, on absolutely no evidence whatsoeverschizophrenics in hospitals were diagnosed with suffering from homosexual panic and mothers were seen as being culpable (Nasar, 1998). There were other psychological disturbances that were also blamed on mothers (Vicedo, 2010). ...
The argument put forth in this paper is that Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories were pseudoscientific and philosophical rather than empirical. Several examples are given to support this conclusion. It is further argued that Freud and his theories should be completely expurgated from the field and not taught in universities.
... The famous primate researcher Harry Harlow proposed that substitute relationships, or "social safeguards" as he called them, can be considered an evolutionary adaptation. According to him, "The biological utility of compensatory mechanisms is obvious, and that effective social safeguards should have developed over the course of evolutionary development is in no way surprising" (Harlow & Harlow, 1968, in Vicedo, 2010. Similarly, according to Bowlby (1997), a child's ability to use substitute objects in the absence of a mother figure might characterize healthy social development. ...
Prior research has often limited the coping potential of inanimate objects to being cues for nostalgia. This article proposes that, due to an unavoidable separation from a loved one, individuals might adhere to an intuitive view that their loved one remains present in inanimate objects associated with him or her. Directing attachment behavior to inanimate objects associated with a loved one can be an effective strategy for maintaining subjective closeness to the partner. In Study 1, participants who imagined being trapped on a deserted island (vs. being together) were more likely to express both attachment to a photograph of their partner and nostalgia. Nostalgia, however, led to the anticipation that having the photograph would exacerbate the situation. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that adults experiencing real‐life separation were more likely than controls to direct their attachment to inanimate objects that decreased loneliness and increased closeness to one's partner. The distinctive role of attachment to inanimate objects as a coping strategy is further discussed.
... Harlow's theory, which fits with the Prophetic teachings about treating children (Francesca,no date1,p. 2), states that human emotions do not develop automatically at birth, but requires three distinct socio-emotional stages or separate affectional systems to be developed, i.e., maternal or parental (infancy), peer (childhood), and sexual (adolescence) (Vicedo, 2010;Francesca, no date1, p. 1). Moreover, every affectional system requires certain conditions to foster socio-emotional development and skills to proceed to the next stage which we will discuss in the next paragraphs. ...
A child’s emotional development begins in infancy and continues to develop into adulthood. Several studies show that parents, peers, and educators play a significant role in children’s emotional development, as they are close to children and understand the needs of them. In this regard, Harlow’s view has a prominent place, which suggests that the socio-emotional development occurs through stages in which parents and educators play a significant role. This write-up analyzes the impact of different parenting styles with reference to Harlow’s theory in the light of psychological research and Islamic concepts.
... In general, instincts are defined as species-typical, automatic, unlearned, mechanically complex yet procedurally inflexible behaviors elicited by clearly defined stimuli, or "releasers" (Hinde, 1982). Konrad Lorenz described instincts as immutable and entirely hardwired, and argued that maternal caregiving must be instinctual because mothers across a wide range of species are able to effectively care for their offspring with no prior training or experience (Vicedo, 2010). For example, despite finding the scent of amniotic fluids unappealing under normal circumstances, rats and sheep find amniotic fluids irresistible immediately after giving birth and proceed to lick their newborns clean, helping to establish the bond between mother and offspring (Hrdy, 1999;Kendrick, Levy, & Keverne, 1992). ...
... Many mammalian species-such as sheep, primates, and humansengage in a type of mutual imprinting between mothers and newborns. Within a day, mothers can distinguish the smell and cry of their own infant from that of others (Formby, 1967;Hrdy, 1999;Porter, 1991;Vicedo, 2010), and shortly after birth, infants imprint on their caregiver (as in Lorenz's own research on ducks). The instinct model of caregiving, first posited by Konrad Lorenz, asserts that mother-child bonding must occur during a critical period shortly after birth to ensure healthy adult functioning in the infant (Vicedo, 2010). ...
... Within a day, mothers can distinguish the smell and cry of their own infant from that of others (Formby, 1967;Hrdy, 1999;Porter, 1991;Vicedo, 2010), and shortly after birth, infants imprint on their caregiver (as in Lorenz's own research on ducks). The instinct model of caregiving, first posited by Konrad Lorenz, asserts that mother-child bonding must occur during a critical period shortly after birth to ensure healthy adult functioning in the infant (Vicedo, 2010). ...
Caregiving for one’s offspring and young kin facilitates the evolutionary goal of successful reproduction. In this chapter we define an emotional state of nurturant love, elicited by cues of cuteness and helplessness, which activates a suite of physiological, cognitive, and behavioral changes facilitating caregiving toward the eliciting target. We review the literature pertaining to the elicitors and function of nurturant love, compare and contrast this emotion to other affective states that may promote caregiving, discuss empirical evidence regarding the properties and behavioral consequences of nurturant love, and conclude with potential future directions for research in this area.
