Affection
Affection
As a rule, “love” and “affection” are words used more or less interchangeably to designate warm, positive feelings directed to individuals; but they may encompass attachments to pets, institutions, things, activities, and ideas. Where differentiation is made, love usually implies more intense feeling than affection, or love may be restricted to feelings with a strong sexual component and affection to those supposedly free of it.
Instincts and behaviorism. Early psychologists, including William James (1890) and William McDougall (1908), recognized the existence of love as an emotion or sentiment and accepted it as instinctually based and consequently demanding little more than that its emergence and expression be observed. Sigmund Freud (1905) also approached love as a derivative of instinct, but he elevated it to a central position in his theory. This was the status of love in psychology about 1915, when instincts began to give way to the behavioristic approach and emotions became a problem for experimental study.
The laboratory investigation of love had a brief life, beginning with John B. Watson (1924–1925), who reported that three primary emotions—love, fear, and rage—were arousable in the newborn infant. Stroking or patting the lips, nipples, and genitals produced stretching, cooing, and extension of the arms, and these responses were considered to constitute love. Through care of the infant, the mother became a conditioned love stimulus, and by generalization and conditioning, the infant developed a broadened range of conditioned love stimuli. Consequently, Watson advised parents to handle infants objectively to avoid overly strong conditioning of love to themselves.
The subsequent flood of laboratory studies questioned the specificity of emotions in the neonate and concluded that it starts life with only vague emotional responses, which gradually differentiate by three months of age into general patterns similar to those reported by Watson. Delight, pleasure, and contentment replaced love for the three-month-old. Love, or affection, was ascribed to the second half of the first year, and love for parents and love for children were attributed to the second year (Bridges 1931). Further specificity evolved during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. These observations were generally accepted by experimental psychologists, and for 35 years love was absent from the laboratory and from most psychology textbooks. Meanwhile, investigations of emotion centered on the negative states of fear, anger, jealousy, and the like.
Psychoanalytic theory . Psychoanalytic theory originated before instincts came into disrepute, and Freud, persevering despite criticism, continued to develop, elaborate, and amend his theory throughout the behavioristic and into the neobehavioristic periods. Freud’s theory deals with love, or affection, by postulating the concept of the libido, first described as an all-inclusive sexual drive and, later, as a broad life force combining all of the positive, life-sustaining drives. The libido is, then, the basic tension-producing force leading the individual to seek relief. The objects providing relief are “love” objects, and the attachments to these objects are affectional. Thus, in simplest terms, love is the product of relieving libidinal strivings, and all attachments in life have this common origin.
Freud traced the libido from the cradle to maturity (1905), dividing development into pregenital and genital periods. The pregenital period begins at birth with the oral phase, in which satisfaction comes from stimulation of the erogenous mouth by nursing and such substitute activities as thumbsucking. The anal phase is next, initiated by the emergence of the anal area as a second erogenous zone, and is satisfied by elimination. The third pregenital phase, the phallic stage, begins with awakening of the penis and clitoris as erogenous zones in males and females, respectively, and is satisfied by urination and masturbation. A latency period follows, lasting from about five years of age to puberty. The oral, anal, and phallic satisfactions are then normally in abeyance in whole or part, and the libido finds satisfaction through sublimation—a period of great importance for education. The genital period starts at puberty with reawakening of the genital erogenous zone, this time with more intensity and, in the female, with arousal of internal as well as external genitalia. Satisfaction of the libido now comes normally through coitus, but cultural restrictions may limit satisfactions to substitute activities.
In the pregenital period, the self is a main love object because the individual can satisfy erogenous needs through self-stimulation. The mother is the primary external love object because she feeds, trains, and fondles the infant; for similar reasons the father may be an additional one. Love for the mother is enhanced in the phallic phase in boys, leading to the Oedipus complex, when the mother is an incestuous object and the father an object of hostility, followed by a resolution, usually resulting in identification and love for both parents. The girl develops a parallel complex in which the father becomes an incestuous love object and the mother a hostile object, and this is similarly resolved. The disappearance of the Oedipus complex launches the latency period. In the genital period, unrelated persons of the opposite sex become the primary love objects.
Freud’s theory has had especially great impact on professional people working with children. The “institutionalized child syndrome” has been noted by many and has been a stimulus to research and theory (Spitz 1945). It has been repeatedly observed that infants reared in impersonal institutions lack interest in their environment and show inferior physical and mental development. In extreme cases they die of marasmus, a wasting away of the body, or they may develop autism, a psychological withdrawal. The basis is usually attributed to lack of mothering, although some autistic cases suggest additional or alternative causation. Similarly, many children reared by rejecting or indifferent mothers have been observed to develop early physical and psychological problems, even marasmus and autism (Ribble 1944). In the decade after Watson’s advice to rear children objectively, clinicians reported many “Watsonian” problem children. Consequently, mothers today are counseled to provide abundant love to their infants and children, and whenever possible efforts are made to place motherless infants in loving foster homes [seeInfancy, article onthe effects of early experience].
A negative by-product of psychoanalytic theory has been the singling out of mother–child relationships as the primary cause of behavior problems, neuroses, and psychoses, to the neglect of subsequent events. The resumption of psychological laboratory studies of love promises, however, to amend both theory and practice by focusing attention on additional affectional relationships.
Affectional systems
In a series of experimental studies on the affectional development of rhesus monkeys, Harry Harlow (1959; Harlow & Harlow 1965; 1966) has advanced a theory holding that love must be treated not as a unitary function but as multiple functions served by at least five distinct but interacting affectional systems, each aroused by its own stimulus conditions and expressed through its own response patterns. Each system develops in a series of orderly stages, characterized by different underlying variables and mechanisms. These systems, in order of development, are (1) infant–mother affectional system; (2) infant–infant, or peer, affectional system; (3) heterosexual affectional system; (4) mother–infant, or maternal, affectional system; and (5) father–infant, or paternal, affectional system.
Infant–mother affectional system
The infant–mother affectional system is initiated at birth through reflex sucking and clinging, in which bodily contact plays at least as important a role as nursing. With development, attachment to the mother, whether monkey or human, comes under voluntary control, and sight and sound of the mother as well as contact provide comfort and security, enabling the infant to be away from the mother for increasingly long periods in order to explore its physical and social environment.
Infant–infant affectional system
Contact with other infants launches the infant–infant, or peer, affectional system. The monkey comes to play closely with age-mates and develops strong affectional ties for them. The human mother, and often the father and older children, may bridge the gap between mothering and early peer relationships by playing with the infant at its own level until it is physically mature enough to play actively with peers. While peer relationships strengthen, maternal ties weaken, for the infant’s needs change as it matures, and the changing infant calls forth altering maternal responses. The monkey mother actively abets the process of separating her infant through gradually increasing rejection when the infant makes demands on her. The human mother normally also discourages her infant from too great attachment to her, consciously or unconsciously, by leaving it alone for increasingly long periods, by diverting its attention to toys, by restraining it when it becomes too active, and, eventually, by encouraging it to play with others.
The peer affectional system is the basis of friendship and continues to function throughout childhood, adolescence, and adult life. Affectional systems that develop later do not replace the peer system. The expression of affection may change as individuals mature, and specific friendships may change, but affectional relationships continue between like-sexed and opposite-sexed individuals.
Heterosexual affectional system
The foundation of the heterosexual affectional system is laid in the peer affectional development period. Bodily contact with peers becomes accepted and desired, a basic necessity for heterosexual affection. In monkeys, play comes increasingly to show components of the adult sexual act so that the postures and activities are well organized long before puberty, lacking only intromission and ejaculation. Anthropologists have reported similar play patterns in human cultures permitting juvenile sexual activities (Benedict 1938). Another base of monkey heterosexual behavior in the peer period lies in the development of diverse nonsexual behaviors tending to separate the sexes in their play. The male becomes progressively rougher and more aggressive in play and the female more passive and submissive. The sign of submission in monkeys is turning away from the aggressor, assuming a rigid posture, and averting the face, a pattern closely approximating the female’s role in copulation. This differentiation in play is also present in human children, for boys tend to prefer physical activity and girls less active pastimes. It is likely that this is the basis for affectional preferences of girls for girls and boys for boys in middle childhood—Freud’s latency period.
At puberty, the monkey is prepared for the complete sexual act, limited only by the receptivity of the female, which is restricted to estrus. Generally, the female initiates mating, and the pair shows close ties for no longer than the duration of estrus. Because pregnant or lactating females do not show estrus, opportunities for copulation may be very limited; but the group holds together because of its many and varied affectional attachments. Culture so controls heterosexual activities in human societies, even in those permissive to children, that human heterosexual relationships after puberty follow no universal patterns.
Maternal affectional system
The maternal affectional system in monkeys is initiated with the appearance of the first infant and is reinstated with each subsequent infant. Like the heterosexual affectional system, its basis is laid in the peer affectional system, when infants develop affection for others of their species. Before puberty the female shows interest in babies and may pat or hold them, but even without this experience she can minister to her first infant; monkeys captured at one year, after peer experience, and raised without seeing infants after that time, show tender care at first parturition.
The initial maternal stage is one of continuous physical care, providing nursing, contact, support, grooming, and protection. As the baby gains bodily control, the mother lets the baby leave her, first only briefly and at a short distance, then for longer periods and distances. Eventually she begins to discipline the baby for transgressions, the start of the ambivalent period, which is characterized by increasing negative responses, albeit the predominant behavior is positive, and lasts until the mother has a new infant. Bodily separation is then achieved, but psychological attachment persists long after.
Paternal affectional system
In most subhuman primates, the paternal affectional system is confined to protecting and comforting all young within the troop, for most monkeys and apes live in groups organized around adult male leaders. Females with infants cluster about the male leader or leaders, surrounded by juveniles and by childless and adolescent females. On the periphery are the other males—adolescents, young adults, and outcasts. Adult males are tolerant of infants, occasionally “mothering” abandoned older infants, and they stop uneven squabbles. The paternal affectional system is stronger in human males, doubtless enhanced by culture. It is not uncommon for older boys to protect younger children or for adolescent or childless adult males to assume a paternal role toward youngsters; but for most males in Western cultures the paternal affectional system comes into full operation only with paternity. The helpless infant elicits sympathy and tenderness, and the bonds are strengthened by the infant’s responsiveness. The paternal system, like the maternal one, depends upon the prior establishment of affectional ties to others of the species. It differs from the maternal system, however, in that it lacks the underlying endocrinal changes that accompany parturition in the female and doubtless help shape maternal behavior.
Deprivation studies
The concept of multiple, interdependent affectional systems with roots in varying physical and psychological needs and elaborated by learning explains the sequential development of affectional objects and is consistent with scientific findings on subhuman and human primates, both normal and abnormal ones. Deprivation studies (Harlow & Harlow 1962) point to the importance of both mothering and early peer experience, and especially to peer affection, for later heterosexual and maternal normality, thus removing the compulsion to trace all psychological ills to maternal inadequacy.
Monkeys raised individually from birth to 12 or 24 months of age, with or without a dummy mother, become socially inadequate adolescents and adults. Deprived of both mothering and play with peers, they show abnormal behavior, such as chewing on their bodies or engaging in repetitive stereotyped movements, and they are hyperaggressive when permitted to associate with other monkeys. No male thus raised has ever shown normal sex behavior, even after repeated exposures to breeding-stock females in estrus. Some females have gradually adapted to their heterosexual role, although rarely achieving the fully normal female posture, and 20 of them have produced infants. All but 2 of these “motherless mothers” have been cruel or indifferent to their first-born. Apparently, however, they became socialized by their experience with first babies, because 6 of the 7 mothers producing additional infants were either adequate or overprotective to their later offspring.
On the other hand, monkeys raised with dummy mothers and peer experience from the first month of life, or as groups of 4 in a large cage without any mothering, developed into normal adolescents and adults. Similarly, 4 first-born infants of abusive motherless mothers were given daily experience with each other from birth to 6 months and were normal adolescents. Monkeys raised with their mothers until 8 months old and then given peer experience were hyperaggressive and fearful of intimate contact. Their social adjustment was adequate but inferior to that of mothered monkeys given earlier peer experience. Thus, it would appear that in the protected laboratory situation, monkeys can develop normally without mothering or with inadequate mothering if they can form early affectional ties with peers. Real mothers can substitute for peers somewhat, but mother-raised offspring deprived of early peer affection are less socialized as adolescents.
The Harlow theory is not antithetical to Freud’s and in many aspects parallels it. It may even provide a framework for unifying the findings of psychoanalysis and learning theories of social behavior and personality.
Margaret K. Harlow
[Directly related are the entriesFriendshipandSympathy and empathy. Other relevant material may be found inEmotionandPsychoanalysis.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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