Bowlbys Deprivation
In his hypothesis, Bowlby believed that an infant’s failure to attach to
a
primary caregiver would have long term effects. This essay will attempt
to
evaluate Bowlby’s deprivation hypothesis. Firstly, the terms
‘attachment’
and ‘deprivation’ will be defined. Following that, a full
definition of the
hypothesis will be made, and then an attempt will be made
to describe and
understand the studies and period of history that lead to
Bowlby’s ideas and
the influence they generated. A full evaluation will be
made of his deprivation
hypothesis, including detailed criticisms of his
theory. Finally, conclusions
will be drawn to show if Bowlby’s deprivation
hypothesis can still retain any
credibility. The first task is to define the
terms attachment and deprivation.
In 1973 the leading attachment
psychologist, Mary Ainsworth, pointed out that
"Attachment is an
affectional tie that one person forms to another person,
binding them
together in space, and enduring over time". Deprivation can occur
when there
is insufficient opportunity for interaction with a mother figure
(privation),
when there is insufficient interaction with mother (masked
deprivation), or
when there are repeated breaches of ties with mother figures.
In 1949,
the World Health Organisation became concerned about the number of
homeless
children, or children who were growing up in institutions as a result
of the
war years. They commissioned Bowlby to look into this matter, and to
report
to them whether these children were likely to be suffering from
their
experiences, and what the best kind of upbringing for such children
was. Bowlby
concluded that a warm intimate and continuing relationship with a
mother figure
is an essential precondition for mental health. Maternal
deprivation or a
disturbed emotional attachment between mother and child was
said to cause
irreparable damage, not only to the child but also to society
as a whole. He
stated (1951) "deprived children, whether in their own homes
or not, are a
source of social infection as real and serious as are carriers
of diphtheria and
typhoid". Bowlby’s report to the WHO had a great deal of
influence among
health care officials, social workers, and parents. But the
conclusions he came
to were very controversial and caused arguments right
from the very beginning.
Contrary to behaviourists and Freudians, who
thought that physical comfort was a
caregiver’s primary concern, Bowlby
(1951) suggested that emotional care was
at least equally important. He
states that "maternal attachment is as
essential for healthy psychological
development as vitamins and minerals are for
physical health". Bowlby (1951)
also proposed the concept of monotropy, that
is the need for one central
caregiver, usually the mother, but alternatively the
father or another
person. Finally, Bowlby (1951) felt that there was a critical
period in the
formation of attachments. He believed that children who experience
maternal
deprivation below the age of four will suffer permanent damage.
Three
landmark studies conducted in the 1950s supported his views. In 1946,
Bowlby
looked at the life histories of eighty-eight children who had been
referred to
his psychiatric clinic, half of whom had a criminal record for
theft. Fourteen
of the ‘thieves’ displayed an ‘affectionless’ character, that
is, a lack
of normal affection, shame or sense of responsibility. Almost all
of these
affectionless children (eighty-six per cent of them) had suffered
‘early and
prolonged separations from their mothers’. In practice, this meant
that, at
least before the age of two, these children had continually or
repeatedly been
in foster homes or hospitals, often not visited by their
families. Of the
remaining seventy-four children who were not affectionless,
only seven (one per
cent) had been separated. This appears to be strong
evidence in support of
Bowlby'’ hypothesis, but the data was
retrospective and, more importantly,
correlational. It can not be assumed
whether the maladjustment was caused by the
separations themselves or if
there was a third factor responsible for both
maladjustment and separations,
for example general family discord could be cause
of both. This was one of
Rutter’s criticisms, which will be discussed later,
in further detail. More
support for Bowlby’s views came from a piece of
classic research conducted by
Lorenz (1935). In this study, Lorenz became
‘mother’’ to a brood of goslings.
It was already known that many birds
attach themselves to the first figure
they see upon hatching and persist in this
attachment, and Lorenz’s work
confirmed this. The phenomenon is called
imprinting, an ethological concept
taken from embryology. During pre-natal
development, there are short periods
when an individual is especially
vulnerable. These times are called ‘critical
periods’, and the effect is an
imprint. Imprinting is an example of an
instinct, an inherited behaviour pattern
that predisposes an individual to
certain forms of learning at critical times in
development. Bowlby suggested
that attachment behaviour is a kind of imprinting
and is irreversible.
However, in more recent studies of adopted children, Tizard
(1977) have found
that older children can form satisfactory new relationships
with adults
despite the lack of earlier attachment. A third line of evidence
came from
Harlow’s work with rhesus monkeys (1959), an experiment was devised
where a
monkey was provided with two ‘mothers’, one a wire cylinder with
a
monkey-like face and a feeding bottle attached, the other with no feeding
bottle
but wrapped in a cloth. The position taken by behaviourists and
Freudians (Gleitman
etc 1988????) would be that the monkeys should become
attached to the
‘mother’ that offered food rather than comfort. In fact, the
monkeys spent
most of their time with the cloth mother, visiting the other
one only for food.
When they were frightened, they always went to the
cloth mother. In later life,
the monkeys raised without a responsive mother
became socially maladjusted and
had difficulty with mating and parenting.
When considering Harlow’s research,
it could be argued that making
generalisations from animal to human behaviour is
not always appropriate.
(REF). Behaviourists argue that the difference between
human and non-human
species are quantitative rather than qualitative, but other
psychologists
believe that certain unique features of the human species (such
as
consciousness and language) mean that non-human animal research has
limited
applicability. REF Harlow’s research has also been criticised in
terms of the
ethics of allowing animals to be manipulated in this way. Such
criticism could
also be applied to Lorenz’s work with goslings. Schaffer and
Emerson (1964)
challenged some of Bowlby’s claims. They found attachment to a
specific person
started to occur at around 7 months, but multiple attachments
were the norm. For
many the attachment to the mother was at the top of the
hierarchy, but for
others the main attachment was to the father. They also
found the strength of
attachment was not related to the length of time spent
with the child, or to
basic caretaking functions of feeding etc., being
fulfilled. It was the quality
and intensity of interaction that was
important. Studies of Kibbutzs support
this as despite multiple mothering
their primary attachment were still with
their parents (Sagi et al, 1978).
Therefore, these studies do not support the
behaviourists of Freud as both
theories state feeding is important for
attachment to occur. These findings
suggest that Bowlby was correct in
identifying the importance of attachment,
but incorrect in overemphasising the
single maternal role and the time factor
for all children. Attachment, however
is only one part of his theory. Another
part relates to the effects of
deprivation. Rutter (1981) felt that the main
problem with the concept of
maternal deprivation was that it muddled together
a range of essentially
different experiences. He felt that separation is not
the crucial factor in
emotional disturbance. Instead, it may be that general
family discord underlies
the emotional disturbances observed by Bowlby. It
may also be that affectionless
psychopathy is due to the initial failure to
form attachments (privation) rather
than attachment disruption (deprivation).
Finally, situations where children
experience deprivation, such as short
hospital stays, may create emotional
disturbance because of the strange and
frightening environment as much as the
separation and interference with
attachments. Bowlby’s reliance on
retrospective studies linking caregiver
separation with delinquency cannot be
seen as establishing a causal link
between the two. It is equally possible that
factors other than the absence
of the mother (lack of parental supervision for
example) could have been
responsible for the delinquency. Rutter (1981) found
that it was the
circumstances surrounding the loss that was most likely to
determine the
consequences rather than the loss per se. Bowlby’s deprivation
hypothesis was
important in changing our view of early emotional behaviour from
one of
dependency, the behaviourist and Freudian view, to one where the infant
is an
active participant in eliciting care. The criticisms served to refine
this
theory in several important ways: to include multiple attachments, to
place less
emphasis on mother-love and to distinguish between different kinds
of
deprivation. McFaydon (1994) suggests that many critics ‘seem almost to
have
got stuck in a time warp, hanging on to [Bowlby’s] early ideas, which
were of
course extremely controversial but also important and influential at
the
time’.