The Physiology of Love
Or, why a well fed infant, attended by the best doctors, does not thrive without love
š Hey there! Welcome to aĀ new editionĀ of The Sunday Wisdom! My name is Abhishek. I read a lot of books, think a lot of things, and this is where I dump my notes and (so called) learnings.
I mostly write to educate my future self, but if you like what you read here, I would say this hobby of mine just became a bit more purposeful. Nowā¦ time for the mandatory plug!
But seriously, if you are facing trouble completing the subscription above, you can alternatively make a pledge on Patreon (if you are so keen). Pledge whatever amount you want, and Iāll unlock paid posts for you. Deal?
Enough talk! On to this weekās essay. Itās about 1,950 words.
Q: Does āloveā have any scientific backing?
Frederick II (1194 ā 1250) was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 and King of Jerusalem from 1225. As an avid patron of science and the arts, he played a major role in promoting literature through the Sicilian School of poetry.
But oftentimes, his passion for experimentation and his tendency to follow a strictly scientific method (even before it formally existed) went a bit too far.
This one time his court was engrossed in a philosophic dispute over the ānaturalā language of humans. The central question was, are human beings born with an innate set of languages and, if so, what are they?
In an attempt to resolve the question, Frederick (who was apparently betting on Hebrew, Greek, or Latin) comes up with an elaborate idea of a brutal experiment.
He takes possession of a bunch of hapless infants and decides to bring them up until they are fully grownā¦ by confining them into solitary rooms of their own. (Heās the king after all, and can literally do whatever the hell he fancies.)
Every day someone brings the child food, fresh blankets, and clean clothes ā all of the best quality of course. But they donāt stay, or play with the infant, or hold it ā lest they speak in the childās presence and ruin the whole damn experiment.
The infants are reared completely devoid of any human language so that everyone would get to see what is after all the natural language of humans.
(Itās important to note that Fred the King was quite the budding scientist and frequently conducted such absurd experiments. This one time he got interested in digestion. Frederick wondered whether digestion was faster when you rested after eating or when you exercised. To test this, he had two men brought from his prison, fed identical and lavish dinners, and afterward one was sent off to nap and the other was sent off for a strenuous hunt. With that phase of the experiment completed, he had both men returned to his court, disemboweled in front of him, and their innards examined. If you are curious to know who had digested his food better, youāll have to read the whole essay. Yeah this is a trick! Now back to Frederickās ānaturalā language experiment.)
Of course, the kids who were devoid of any sort of communication or language their whole life do not spontaneously burst out of the door one day reciting poetry or singing opera. In fact, the kids do not burst out of the door at all. None of them survive.
The lesson is obvious to us now ā optimal growth and development do not merely depend on being fed the right number of calories and being kept warm. Frederick ālaboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of hands and gestures and gladness of countenance and blandishments,ā accounted the 13th-century Italian chronicler Salimbene di Adam.
It seems quite plausible that these kids, all healthy and well fed, died of a nonorganic failure to thrive. That was the thirteenth century and a valuable lesson was learnt, albeit at a very high cost. But unfortunately that wasnāt the last of it. History had more brutality in reserve, all in the name of science.
An infant human or animal can be well fed, maintained at an adequate temperature, and attended by the best of doctors, yet still not thrive. Something is still missing.
Something roughly akin to āloveā is needed for proper biological development, and its absence is among the most aching, distorting stressors that we can suffer.
Scientists and physicians and other caregivers have often been dim at recognising its importance in the mundane biological processes by which organs and tissues grow and develop.
In the beginning of the twentieth century, the leading expert on child-rearing in the western world was a Dr. Luther Holt of Columbia University.
Holtās book,Ā The Care and Feeding of Children, was based on his extensive experience treating sick and malnourished children in his practice, as well as his belief in the importance of scientific approaches to child-rearing.
Holt emphasised the importance of proper nutrition, hygiene, and physical activity for childrenās health and development, and also included advice on issues such as discipline and sleep.
But at the same time, Holt also warned parents of the adverse effects of the āvicious practiceā of using a cradle, picking up the child when it cried, or handling it too often. (Even now, the fact that, in many western countries, infants as old as one month donāt sleep with their parents, or that thereās such as thing as a cry-it-out method, where the poor kid cries itself to sleep all on its own, without its parents attending to it, comes as a cultural shock to me, predominantly because itās unthinkable in most eastern countries.)
Back then, all experts believed that affection not only wasnāt needed for development but was a squishy, messy thing that kept kids from becoming upright, independent citizens.
Yet, in a classic set of studies that began in the 1950s ā carried out by the psychologist Harry Harlow of the University of Wisconsin, a renowned and controversial scientist ā many a young organisms were able to teach us how these āexpertsā were so very very wrong. I must also tell you that these studies are, as you would soon realise in the following paragraphs, among the most haunting and troubling of all the pages of science.
You see, psychology in the early twentieth century was dominated by either Freudians (who believed that human behaviour and mental processes are largely driven by unconscious desires, conflicts, and repressed memories) or Behaviourists (according to whom animal or human behaviours are shaped, maintained, and modified by consequences ā such as rewards or punishments ā and that internal mental states or subjective experiences are not relevant).
According to behaviourism (founded by American psychologist John B. Watson), just a few basic things like hunger, pain, or sex lie at the basis of reinforcement. Look at the behaviours, view organisms as machines responding to stimuli, and develop a predictive mathematics built around the idea of rewards and punishments.
Harry Harlow wanted to answer a seemingly obvious question: Why do infants become attached to their mothers? Is it because Mom provides food?
For Behaviourists, this was obvious, as attachment was thought to arise solely from the positive reinforcement of food.
For Freudians, it was also obvious, as infants were thought to lack the āego developmentā to form any kind of relationship with anything at that age.
And for physicians influenced by the likes of Holt, it was convenient. No need for mothers to visit hospitalised infants anymore ā anyone with a bottle would supply attachment needs. No need to worry about prematurely born babies kept antiseptically isolated in incubators ā regular feeding suffices for human contact. And no need for children in orphanages to be touched, held, or noted as individuals. Whatās all that got to do with healthy development after all?
But Harlow isnāt satisfied. He decides to test this with an experiment instead. He starts raising infant rhesus monkeys without their mothers. Instead, he gives them a choice of two types of artificial āsurrogateā mothers.
One pseudo-mother has a monkey head constructed of wood and a body made of wire. In the middle of the body is a bottle of milk. This surrogate mother gives nutrition. The other surrogate mother has a similar wood head but instead of a wire body, this oneās wrapped in a soft terry cloth. But thereās no milk bottle. (This mother gives whatā¦ love?)
The Behaviourist and the Freudian monkeys (if they were real) would be snuggling up to the milk-mom within seconds. But not the real baby monkeys ā they choose the terry-cloth mother instead.
Despite the wire mother providing food, the infant monkeys consistently choose to spend more time with the terry cloth mother. What a surprise indeed!
Kids donāt love their mothers because Mom balances their nutritive intake. They love them because Mom loves them back (or at least is someone soft to cling to). āMan cannot live by milk alone. Love is an emotion that does not need to be bottle- or spoon-fed,ā wrote Harlow.
Although Harlow was a crusader against the prevailing beliefs about attachment and socialisation, his experiments naturally raises ethical concerns about animal welfare and the use of animals in research. His experiments are often among the primary ones cited by those opposed to animal experimentation.
The controversy also arises from the nature of his experiments and variations on them (for example, raising monkeys in complete social isolation, in which they never see another living animal). On top of that, Harlowās scientific writing displayed an appalling callousness to the suffering of these animals. The sheer savage indifference of his writing is enough to move anyone to tears of rage.
But at the same time, these studies have been extremely useful (although there should have been far fewer of them carried out). They have taught us how contact comfort is crucial for attachment, how maternal deprivation can lead to negative outcomes (such as aggression, depression, and an inability to form normal social relationships), how early positive attachment experiences help in forming healthy relationships with others in future.
Other aspects of Harlowās work have taught us how repeated separations of infants from their mothers can predispose those individuals to depression when they are adults.
However, the irony is that it required Harlowās pioneering work to demonstrate the unethical nature of that work. Wasnāt it obvious before? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you isolate us as infants even for a couple of minutes, do we not suffer? Isnāt that common sense?
Surprisingly, few in the know thought so back in the day.
Even though Iāve made my point, and even though the conclusion of Harlowās study was fairly obvious to begin with, hereās another study (that wasnāt really conducted by anyone) that makes the same old point (if slightly more subtly) that I want to share with you, becauseā¦ why not!
The subjects of this āexperimentā were children reared in two different orphanages in Germany after World War II.
Both orphanages were run by the government; thus there were important controls in place ā the kids in both had the same general diet, the same frequency of doctorsā visits, and so on. The main identifiable difference in their care was the two women who ran the orphanages.
In one orphanage was FrƤulein Grun, the warm, nurturing mother figure who played with the children, comforted them, and spent all day singing and laughing. In the other was FrƤulein Schwarz, a woman who was clearly in the wrong profession.
FrƤulein Schwarz discharged her professional obligations, but minimised her contact with the children. She frequently criticised and berated them, typically in front of their peers.
The growth rates at the two orphanages were entirely different. FrƤulein Schwarzās kids grew in height and weight at a slower pace than the kids in the other orphanage. Then, in an elaboration that couldnāt have been more useful if it had been planned by a scientist, FrƤulein Grun moved on to greener pastures and, for some bureaucratic reason, FrƤulein Schwarz was transferred to the other orphanage.
Growth rates in her former orphanage promptly increased, and those in her new one decreased. Also, among the prisoners of Fred the King, the sleeper had digested his food better.
Today I Learned
The spotted hyena is a vastly unappreciated, misrepresented beast. They are wondrous animals who have gotten a bad rap from the press.
We all know the scenario: The Discovery Channel is on and itās dawn in the African savannah. A bunch of lions are eating something dead. We are delighted, hoping to get a good view of the blood and guts.
Suddenly, on the edge of our field of vision, we spot them ā skulky, filthy, untrustworthy hyenas looking to dart in and steal some of the food. Scavengers! We are invited to heap our contempt on them (a surprising bias, given how very few of the carnivorous among us ever wrestle down our meals with our canines).
It wasnāt until zoologists got access to infrared night-viewing scopes that they got a chance to watch hyenas at night (important, given that hyenas mostly sleep during the day). Turns out that they are fabulous hunters. And you know what happens? Lions, who are not particularly effective hunters, because they are big and slow and conspicuous, spend most of their time keying in on hyenas and ripping off their kills.
No wonder when itās dawn on the savannah the hyenas on the periphery are looking cranky, with circles under their eyes. They stayed up all night hunting that thing, and whoās having breakfast now?
Timeless Insight
Learning isnāt the same as memorisation.
Learning is an active process of trial and error, discovery, and free inquiry. Itās a quest to understand, not just to know.
If you canāt explain something clearly in simple language, itās simply because you didnāt understand it well enough.
Often we donāt realise we donāt understand something until itās too late. Only when weāre asked to explain something, our mind goes blank. It is only when weāre asked to demonstrate our knowledge outside our own head that we realise we know a lot less than we thought.
What Iām Reading
When people quit on time, it will usually feel like they are quitting too early, because it will be long before they experience the choice as a close call.
ā Annie Duke, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away
Tiny Thought
The way to improve your defaults isnāt by willpower but by creating an artificial environment where your desired behaviour becomes the default behaviour.
Before You Goā¦
Thanks so much for reading! Send me ideas, questions, reading recs. You can write to abhishek@coffeeandjunk.com, reply to this email, or use the comments. Andā¦ if you feel like Iāve done a great job writing this piece, be generous and buy me a few cups. āļø
Until next Sunday,
Abhishek š