John Bowlby, 1946

AIMS: In the early 1940s it was recognised that children could suffer if they were separated from their mother for a long period of time. However, the extent of such suffering had not been clearly established; and it was not properly appreciated that separation from the mother could produce long-term negative effects.

Bowlby was a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, working at the London Child Guidance Clinic in the 1930s and 1940s. He had become interested in the effect of children’s disrupted relationships with their parents when, as a medical student, he volunteered to work in a residential children’s home and encountered a range of abnormal behaviour. He was especially struck by the cases of 2 particular children. One was a very isolated, remote, affectionless teenager who had been expelled from his previous school for theft and had had no stable mother figure. The second child was an anxious boy of 7 or 8 who trailed Bowlby around and who was known as his ‘shadow’. Bowlby began to speculate that many mental health and behavioural problems could be attributed directly to early childhood experiences.

One of the issues Bowlby worked with at the Child Guidance Clinic was juvenile delinquency. He noted that the modal age for appearing in court for theft was 13 years, suggesting that theft was a childhood condition. In 1938 9/10 crimes were thefts and half of these were committed by someone under the age of 21. Over 1/6 thefts were carried out by children under the age of 14. At the age of 16 1/3 who appeared in court had been charged before.

From his conversations with mothers, Bowlby found that love for their child might be only one aspect of their relationship with their child. (“...often an intense though perhaps un-admitted dislike and rejection of him also came to light.”) He aimed to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between maternal deprivation and emotional maladjustment, based on his observations of patients at his child guidance clinic. He had observed that children showing poor emotional development had often experienced separation/deprivation and suggested that this could result n psychological and behavioural problems later in life.

PROCEDURE (METHOD): Between 1936 and 1939 an opportunity sample of 88 children was selected from the clinic where Bowlby worked - he literally picked suitable children from consecutive referrals. Of these, 44 were juvenile thieves and had been referred to him because of their stealing. The other 44 ‘controls’ had been referred to him due to emotional problems - though they did not display anti-social behaviour. Half the children in each group were aged 5-11; the other half 12-16. The 2 groups were roughly matched for aged and IQ. There were 31 boys and 13 girls in the ‘theft group’ and 34 boys and 10 girls in the control group. Of the ‘theft group’, 24 were referred by their school, 8 by parents, 3 by the court and 9 by the Probation Service. 15 of the thieves were under 9 years old and half were under 11; only one under 11 had been charged. In 22 cases there was chronic and serious stealing, mainly over a long time. In 7 cases the stealing had lasted more than 3 years. 8 of the thieves had been involved in only a few thefts while 4 had only been involved in one.

On arrival at the clinic, each child had their IQ tested by a psychologist who also assessed the child’s emotional attitudes towards the tests. At the same time a social worker interviewed a parent to record details of the child’s early life. The psychologist and social worker made separate reports. A psychiatrist (Bowlby) then conducted an initial interview with the child and accompanying parent. The 3 professionals then met to compare notes and read reports from school, courts, etc.

The psychiatrist conducted a series of further interviews with the child and/or parent over the next few months to gather more in-depth information about the history and psychological characteristics of the child.

The thieves had a wide variety of experiences. Some had been unstable for year; some had received a sudden shock - eg: bereavement; and some had had an exceptional moral lapse. Each child from both groups was eventually classified into one of 6 categories:-

• Normal - no abnormal symptoms
• Depressed - symptoms of Depression - Bowlby also came up with sub-category of ‘Depression’ he called ‘Priggish’ for over-conscientious children
• Circular - alternating symptoms of Depression and over-activity
• Hyperthymic - symptoms of over-activity
• Affectionless - having no affection for others and no shame or sense of responsibility
• Schizoid - withdrawn and lacking relationship with others

RESULTS (FINDINGS): One of the ‘Normals’ had been stealing since the age of 14 but only  from his mother who was taking a lot of his earnings. The other boy, an 8-year-old had only been stealing pennies.

5 children suffered with mild Depression, 2 having a very low IQ. Some were severely depressed, often associated with a specific event.

Bowlby found that some of the children had experienced “early and prolonged separation from their mothers”. He diagnosed 32% (14) of the thieves as ‘affectionless psychopaths’, but none of the controls were. Of the thieves diagnosed with Affectionless Psychopathy, 86% (12) had experienced a long period of maternal separation before the age of 5 years. (They had spent most of their early years in residential homes or hospitals and were not often visited by their families. They had been undemonstrative and unresponsive since infancy. 2 of them showed some affection but matched the criteria in other ways) Only 17% of the thieves not diagnosed as affectionless psychopaths had experienced maternal separation. 2 of the control group had experienced a prolonged separation in their first 5 years.

CONCLUSIONS: Bowlby concluded that maternal separation/deprivation in the child’s early life caused permanent emotional damage. He diagnosed this as a condition and called it Affectionless Psychopathy. According to Bowlby, this condition involves a lack of emotional development, characterised by a lack of concern for others, lack of guilt and inability to form meaningful and lasting relationships. (Bowlby reasoned that the thieves could steal precisely because they didn’t care for others.13/23 (56%) level iv persistent thieves were ‘Affectionless’.) Affectionless psychopaths could also be terribly impulsive. Bowlby claimed that once the attachment bond was broken, the negative effects could not be reversed or undone.

He thought that the affectionless character was depressive at an earlier stage in life and had suffered total loss of mother or foster mother during infancy and early childhood.

The implications were that this research could be used to inform on issues concerning parenting - especially the potential negative effects of mothers going out to work.

EVALUATION (CRITICISMS):

• The data on maternal deprivation was collected retrospectively - some parents being asked to recall events from up to 14 years previously. Consequently the data not be accurate. Also, of course, some parents may have not have asked the interviewer’s questions honestly in order to put themselves in a better light (social desirability bias).
• Some of the children had been separated only for very short periods - so should not have led to bond disruption.
• Correspondingly Michael Rutter (1981) contended that some of the boys were moved so often when in infancy that they never really had a chance to form an attachment relationship - and, therefore, the issue is privation rather than maternal deprivation.
• The sample was not representative. The majority of juvenile thieves were not referred to children’s clinics for treatment. Also the London Child Guidance Clinic usually had 60% boys and 40% girls - so the 2 groups were not representative of the usual intake and the gender composition of the 2 groups makes the study vulnerable to the accusation of gender bias.
• Bowlby’s research was in the form of highly-detailed and thoroughly-comprehensive case studies. While these generally provide rich sources of information and Bowlby’s were triangulated, it is dangerous to generalise from case studies as their findings are unique to the case being studied.
• The research was correlational and non-experimental; for ethical reasons separation/deprivation cannot be manipulated as an independent variable, - thus, cause and effect cannot be inferred. Ie: it cannot be said that separation/deprivation causes emotional damage or Affectionless Psychopathy. Other factors, such as conflict in the family, may have led to these outcomes. Thus, as Rutter (1972) pointed out, Bowlby’s conclusions were flawed, mixing up cause and effect with correlation.
• The study was vulnerable to researcher bias. Bowlby conducted the psychiatric assessments himself and made the diagnoses of Affectionless Psychopathy. He knew whether the children were in the ‘theft group’ or the control group. Consequently, his findings may have unconsciously influenced by his own expectations. This potentially undermines their validity.
• The labels Bowlby used for categorisation were not all standard psychiatric diagnoses.

• Bowlby emphasised Affectionless Psychopathy; but the concept is vague and difficult to assess. The term did not catch on with other researchers in the field. However, the more specific term Reactive Attachment Disorder has been recognised since 1980. In 2003, from the records of 479 participants in the mental health and prison systems, Kathryn Seifert associated Reactive Attachment Disorder with criminality in general and violence in particular.