On several occasions, I’ve argued on this blog about some exaggerated views of newborn babies as adult-like in their feelings and thoughts. Those views may be described as “adultomorphic”-- a made-up word that’s parallel to the term “anthropomorphic” (meaning assigning human characteristics to something that is not human). “Adultomorphic” thinking attributes adult characteristics to infants and young children, and sometimes even to unborn babies. The myth of the “primal wound”, according to Nancy Verrier an emotional scar caused by early separation from the birthmother, is an example of adultomorphic thought.
Some authors offer adultomorphic descriptions of newborn babies and claim that they are supported by empirical investigations. This fact raises the question: who and what were the sources of the “primal wound” and similar ideas? I would suggest that a major contributor to this belief was David Chamberlain, a psychologist who was one of the founders of the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH), an organization that supports a variety of unorthodox beliefs about prenatal life and even the influence of past lives. Chamberlain was also one of the founders of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, a nonaccredited organization that specializes in unconventional methods and belief systems.
In 1988, Chamberlain published a book called Babies Remember Birth; ten years later, that publication became part of The Mind of Your Newborn Baby. Chamberlain cites Nancy Verrier’s The Primal Wound but does not use that specific term. Nevertheless, he advocates strongly for the belief that babies before and at birth experience a range of emotions similar to those adults can experience, as well as thinking in adult-like ways. If this were true, of course, events like immediate separation from the birthmother could certainly have the impact claimed by proponents of the primal wound belief.
But let’s look at the evidence Chamberlain puts together to support his belief in the adult-like minds of newborn babies.
He argues first of all that the psychoanalyst Otto Rank believed that birth trauma was at the root of all psychological problems. This in itself might be irrelevant, but according to Chamberlain, Rank found that focusing on birth trauma enabled him to reduce the length of therapy from years to months. Chamberlain concluded that this supported the idea that experiences at the time of birth are highly significant.
Second, Chamberlain refers to the Vienna-born psychoanalyst Nandor Fodor, who “described many examples of adult memory flashes, dreams, or symptoms linked with birth” (Chamberlain, 1998, p. 89). He notes Fodor’s suggestion that telepathic communication between mother and unborn baby has an effect on the baby. (However, Chamberlain does not refer to Fodor’s extensive dream analyses, with their meticulous interpretation of symbols, including the meaning of specific numbers in dreams, and their interpretation of the letters Y and V as having sexual significance. Fodor also believed that infertility resulted from fear of responsibility and/or rejection of one’s femininity.)
Third, Chamberlain cites L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the “Church of Scientology”, and his “auditing” methods that “frequently uncovered birth memories. His handbook of techniques for ‘auditors’ taught a method of tracing symptoms back to their origins, some of which were at birth or in the womb… he found that people were capable of going into a mental state called ‘dianetic reverie’ … in which they could have access to painful ‘recordings’ (not memories) ‘locked’ in the cells of the body… during dianetic reverie, Hubbard claimed, people could relive traumatic incidents that had occurred at any stage of cellular development from zygote to newborn… Hubbard was elated to report that the recording of a mother and child pair in dianetic therapy compared word for word, detail for detail, and name for name” (Chamberlain, p. 91). (This claim of “recording” seems comparable to Verrier’s belief that “cellular memory” is involved in the primal wound she posits.)
Chamberlain goes on to refer to the investigations by Stanislav Grof of experiences during LSD use. Grof “found his clients [on LSD] constantly returning to aspects of their birth experience. Grof developed the conviction that labor and delivery exerted a profound and lasting effect on personality… Grof has developed a system of ‘holotropic’ therapy in which-- by a variety of sounds, music, and movements-- memories of childhood, birth, and before birth are evoked without drugs” (Chamberlain, p. 95).
Chamberlain also states his belief that children sometimes describe their births spontaneously and correctly, although their parents report that they have not described the births to the children. (He does not, however, note whether the children have seen pictures or heard stories of births which they may adapt to their own story, or whether they have overheard adult conversations.) Chamberlain reports having hypnotized ten pairs of mothers and their children ages 9 to 23 years, elicited their birth descriptions, and found many similarities.
Here is the evidence on which claims of adult-like emotions and thoughts among newborns are based: a claim of efficacy of birth-focused psychotherapy; a claim of telepathic communication; the views of Scientologists; reports of experiences under LSD treatment; hypnotic recall (incidentally, long ago shown not to be more accurate than ordinary memory); and unverified reports that children have told birth stories without receiving information from adults. Are these sufficient to establish the idea that newborns have adult-like emotions and cognitions? It does not appear to me that these reports are even relevant to the question.
The primal wound idea rests on the assumption that adult-like emotions exist before, during, and immediately after birth. The natural history of emotional development contradicts this idea, and the points put forward by Chamberlain appear to play no role in the argument.
Chamberlain’s book repeatedly emphasizes the idea that because newborns share characteristics of adults, they need and deserve careful treatment. Like many other authors dealing with issues about newborns, he seems to feel that if newborns are not seen as adult-like, people will feel that they do not need excellent nurturing and thoughtful care, but that instead they are simple “masses of cells” without thought or feeling. Let me point out, however, that a newborn need not have to be like an adult in order to require tender care. He or she can simply be a newborn-- what a newborn really is-- neither an insentient machine of flesh, nor an adult mind in a tiny body, but a human being whose needs are all the greater because of the early stage of development. That those needs are very different from the needs of an adult does not make them unimportant. It does mean, though, that we grown-ups may need to work hard, and pay attention to relevant empirical research, in order to avoid “adultomorphizing” and drawing very wrong conclusions.
Showing posts with label emotional development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emotional development. Show all posts
Friday, May 6, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Ages and Stages of Baby Emotion: A Natural History
In a recent query apparently directed to another reader, one reader of this blog asked, “when do babies start to feel grief and other emotions?” This is a question that can be talked about a lot. Whether it can be completely answered, or even what the reader meant exactly, is not so certain. I’m going to make some efforts at the “talking about” part.
There are some real difficulties about knowing the answer to this apparently simple question. One is that we can’t really know what any other person feels, in the sense that we can know what we feel ourselves. Even if someone can tell us in words, we can’t be sure that the feelings they experience are connected with the words in the same way that our own feelings would connect with those words. This is a basic problem of the human condition and one reason why most of us experience times of feeling isolated even though we are with other people. Babies, of course, can’t even tell us in words what they feel, so we are in especially deep waters when we try to know something like when they begin to have certain feelings. We have to use things like facial expressions, crying or other vocalizing, posture and gestures to guide us to some idea of the baby’s emotions. Even then, what we’re usually doing is asking ourselves, “all right, if I made that face or sound, what would I be feeling like?” Then we take our own feelings as a best guess about what is going on inside the baby.
A second complication is that all emotions may not begin at the same point in development. We can’t just assume that a display of one emotion means that all other emotions are possible for a baby at that same age. Different emotions may (and in fact apparently do) have different “natural histories”. Some are present at birth, it seems, but others may not come into play until 12 to 15 months of age.
A third complication is that there are probably big differences between a baby’s own experience of feeling and its responses to an adult’s emotions. Babies can have emotional responses to adult facial expressions that do not necessarily involve the same emotion as the one the adult shows. Edward Tronick, the leading infancy researcher, recently published an article showing a picture of a mother playing with her 4-month-old by tickling the baby with her hair. The baby grabbed the hair and gave it a good yank, and the mother tried to pull away, with a brief expression of pain and anger on her face-- whereupon the baby flung up its hands to cover its face and avoid seeing that expression.
What emotional behaviors does the baby have at birth? Just about the only thing that seems to be an expression of emotion is crying. Not surprisingly, newborn babies cry with hunger and with pain (and with different cry patterns in the two situations), but they also cry with anger or frustration, for instance when their arms are held down in dressing or bathing. They may also smile, but it doesn’t seem to matter to them whether they’re looking at a person or at the wall-- the smile is not really an indication of social pleasure at this point. Babies in the first few days also have a suprising ability to imitate the facial expressions of people whose faces are very near them, and will open their mouths, put out their tongues, and mimic happy, sad, or surprised expressions.
By about 4 months, babies become quite sociable, smile at people (including strangers), and will chuckle when tickled lightly. They get angry when frustrated. They are already beginning to be disturbed by an unresponsive face staring at them without responding to their sounds or expressions-- they turn away or even begin to cry within a short time after they begin to see this “still face”. What they don’t show at this age is fear. They are not afraid of strangers, separation, the dark, big dogs, snakes, or loud noises (although they might begin to cry when startled by a noise).
At 6 or 7 months, babies become wary about strange people. Rather than smiling at once, they look suspicious and give a new person the “once-over”, gradually warming up to them. Between 7 and 10 months, fear develops and becomes a major and dramatic feature of the baby’s life . An approaching stranger, no matter how friendly; a brief loss of balance; the noise of the garbage truck that has come once a week for the baby’s whole life-- these may all trigger a fearful expression, wailing, and clutching at a familiar caregiver. Now the baby shows a new interest in facial expressions, and when in a new situation carefully checks out the expression of a familiar adult. If that person looks frightened, the baby looks serious and does not move to explore new things or people; if the adult looks happy, the baby will gradually start to explore.
The new capacity for anxiety and fear are associated with attachment behavior. The baby is able to feel calm and comforted when in contact with a familiar caregiver; alone in a new situation (or with a stranger), he or she may be overwhelmed by the fear of the unfamiliar. Some people suggest that there would be a great evolutionary advantage to this, because most babies crawl or start to walk by this point and could easily move into danger if not “tied” by their fearfulness.
It’s when attachment and fearfulness have emerged that babies begin to have intense grief reactions to separation and loss of familiar people. An abrupt and long-term separation leads to many months of withdrawal, sadness, crying, difficulties in sleeping and eating, even weakened immunity, and there is only a little that unfamiliar people can do to help with this. Eventually, though, given good circumstances, separated babies can recover and be comfortable with new caregivers when they have become familiar.
It’s not until between 12 and 15 months that babies seem to develop the social emotions-- strong feelings that are based on what we expect other people to feel about us. These include shame, embarrassment, and pride. It seems that the baby has to be able to recognize himself or herself in the mirror before embarrassment is possible. (How do you know a child recognizes herself? Put a dab of lipstick on her nose and put her in front of the mirror. One who doesn’t recognize herself just looks at “that person” for a minute and walks away; one who does recognize immediately puts her hand to her nose.)
As you can see, emotions don’t all develop or appear at the same time, as far as we can tell. Some abilities, like imitating a facial expression, are surprisingly early in the schedule; others, like fear, are surprisingly late. It just goes to show that we can only understand infant development by looking carefully at infants rather than trying to work backward from adult characteristics.
There are some real difficulties about knowing the answer to this apparently simple question. One is that we can’t really know what any other person feels, in the sense that we can know what we feel ourselves. Even if someone can tell us in words, we can’t be sure that the feelings they experience are connected with the words in the same way that our own feelings would connect with those words. This is a basic problem of the human condition and one reason why most of us experience times of feeling isolated even though we are with other people. Babies, of course, can’t even tell us in words what they feel, so we are in especially deep waters when we try to know something like when they begin to have certain feelings. We have to use things like facial expressions, crying or other vocalizing, posture and gestures to guide us to some idea of the baby’s emotions. Even then, what we’re usually doing is asking ourselves, “all right, if I made that face or sound, what would I be feeling like?” Then we take our own feelings as a best guess about what is going on inside the baby.
A second complication is that all emotions may not begin at the same point in development. We can’t just assume that a display of one emotion means that all other emotions are possible for a baby at that same age. Different emotions may (and in fact apparently do) have different “natural histories”. Some are present at birth, it seems, but others may not come into play until 12 to 15 months of age.
A third complication is that there are probably big differences between a baby’s own experience of feeling and its responses to an adult’s emotions. Babies can have emotional responses to adult facial expressions that do not necessarily involve the same emotion as the one the adult shows. Edward Tronick, the leading infancy researcher, recently published an article showing a picture of a mother playing with her 4-month-old by tickling the baby with her hair. The baby grabbed the hair and gave it a good yank, and the mother tried to pull away, with a brief expression of pain and anger on her face-- whereupon the baby flung up its hands to cover its face and avoid seeing that expression.
What emotional behaviors does the baby have at birth? Just about the only thing that seems to be an expression of emotion is crying. Not surprisingly, newborn babies cry with hunger and with pain (and with different cry patterns in the two situations), but they also cry with anger or frustration, for instance when their arms are held down in dressing or bathing. They may also smile, but it doesn’t seem to matter to them whether they’re looking at a person or at the wall-- the smile is not really an indication of social pleasure at this point. Babies in the first few days also have a suprising ability to imitate the facial expressions of people whose faces are very near them, and will open their mouths, put out their tongues, and mimic happy, sad, or surprised expressions.
By about 4 months, babies become quite sociable, smile at people (including strangers), and will chuckle when tickled lightly. They get angry when frustrated. They are already beginning to be disturbed by an unresponsive face staring at them without responding to their sounds or expressions-- they turn away or even begin to cry within a short time after they begin to see this “still face”. What they don’t show at this age is fear. They are not afraid of strangers, separation, the dark, big dogs, snakes, or loud noises (although they might begin to cry when startled by a noise).
At 6 or 7 months, babies become wary about strange people. Rather than smiling at once, they look suspicious and give a new person the “once-over”, gradually warming up to them. Between 7 and 10 months, fear develops and becomes a major and dramatic feature of the baby’s life . An approaching stranger, no matter how friendly; a brief loss of balance; the noise of the garbage truck that has come once a week for the baby’s whole life-- these may all trigger a fearful expression, wailing, and clutching at a familiar caregiver. Now the baby shows a new interest in facial expressions, and when in a new situation carefully checks out the expression of a familiar adult. If that person looks frightened, the baby looks serious and does not move to explore new things or people; if the adult looks happy, the baby will gradually start to explore.
The new capacity for anxiety and fear are associated with attachment behavior. The baby is able to feel calm and comforted when in contact with a familiar caregiver; alone in a new situation (or with a stranger), he or she may be overwhelmed by the fear of the unfamiliar. Some people suggest that there would be a great evolutionary advantage to this, because most babies crawl or start to walk by this point and could easily move into danger if not “tied” by their fearfulness.
It’s when attachment and fearfulness have emerged that babies begin to have intense grief reactions to separation and loss of familiar people. An abrupt and long-term separation leads to many months of withdrawal, sadness, crying, difficulties in sleeping and eating, even weakened immunity, and there is only a little that unfamiliar people can do to help with this. Eventually, though, given good circumstances, separated babies can recover and be comfortable with new caregivers when they have become familiar.
It’s not until between 12 and 15 months that babies seem to develop the social emotions-- strong feelings that are based on what we expect other people to feel about us. These include shame, embarrassment, and pride. It seems that the baby has to be able to recognize himself or herself in the mirror before embarrassment is possible. (How do you know a child recognizes herself? Put a dab of lipstick on her nose and put her in front of the mirror. One who doesn’t recognize herself just looks at “that person” for a minute and walks away; one who does recognize immediately puts her hand to her nose.)
As you can see, emotions don’t all develop or appear at the same time, as far as we can tell. Some abilities, like imitating a facial expression, are surprisingly early in the schedule; others, like fear, are surprisingly late. It just goes to show that we can only understand infant development by looking carefully at infants rather than trying to work backward from adult characteristics.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Hurray! The Baby's Crying!
I recently had an e-mail exchange with a friend. I began by saying “Hurray! When I walked up to my neighbor’s baby, he cried and turned away!” My friend answered, “That’s great!”
I looked at this correspondence and it suddenly struck me-- many people would think we were nuts to say such things. Are we people who enjoy being mean to babies? What could possess us to think it’s good when they cry? Well, there is method in our apparent madness.
I had been concerned about this particular baby, whose family lives on my street. When he was about 6 months old and was outdoors with his mother, I walked up and started a conversation. I noticed that the baby never looked at me and didn’t try to get our attention. But he did seem preoccupied with something he was looking at, so I thought perhaps I wasn’t very interesting in comparison. Then, several months later, I saw mother and baby outdoors again-- and the same thing happened. I recounted this to several colleagues at a meeting, and all expressed concern and asked whether the baby was in an early intervention program. They all felt I should talk to the mother about the matter--- although they conceded that she probably wouldn’t speak to me for two years if I did!
Thank goodness, a week or so later, when I walked up to the family, the little guy clouded up, began to whimper, and turned away from me to look at his parents. They were embarrassed that he was being “rude” to me, but I congratulated them on their good work and assured them that this was exactly what he should be doing.
What was going on here? Why do I think this infant should cry when he sees me-- or any other person who is not very familiar to him? I think so, because this changed behavior is an excellent marker of good development. Babies in the first months of life don’t “make strange”. They respond in about the same way to any smiling, sociable person. Somewhere around seven months the baby becomes wary and looks suspiciously and seriously at unfamiliar people, checking them out in the way Margaret Mahler labeled “customs inspection”. After inspecting a friendly-looking new person for a while, the baby warms up and gets sociable. By 8 or 9 months, most babies who have lived in a stable family or other care situation will respond to strangers with anxiety and do their best to turn away and look for or at their “own people”. A common scenario is that the mother is carrying the baby at the grocery store or other public place, and a friendly stranger approaches to talk to the baby. The baby turns away, puts his or her face against the mother, or moves to look to the mother’s other side. Friendly stranger knows what to do about this, and rushes around to look at the baby from the other direction! (Repeat ad lib until baby is bawling and mother is completely frustrated but trying to be polite to this person, who loves babies but doesn’t really think they’re people.)
These changes in the baby don’t occur because there have been bad experiences, or because the baby is spoiled and willful, or because of emotional disturbance. They are natural developments that take place in almost all babies who have had a normal basic level of adult care and social interaction, and they are good evidence that the baby is on a normal schedule of development. If a family baby of 9 months did not show reluctance to deal with a stranger, we would need to ask what the problem was; there might be difficulties with vision or hearing, or even with mental development in general. If a baby who had been cared for by many different people, or often moved from one care setting to another, and was friendly to everyone, we might well conclude that he or she needed to have a long period of consistent care from a few people, in order to have an opportunity to develop special relationships.
But why is it a good thing for babies to avoid strangers? It seems like a nuisance from a practical point of view. It means we can’t leave them with babysitters or at a new day care arrangement, without a whole lot of fuss. It means that people who care a lot about the baby but don’t see her often may be offended when the baby snubs them. What’s to like about it?
One good thing is that this situation acts to some extent like an “invisible playpen” and helps to keep babies near adults who care about them even when they’ve begun to crawl or walk. The safety factors that apply in modern times were probably even more important when our remote ancestors reared their children in wild and dangerous settings, and wandering away might lead to becoming a meal for a predator. In addition, though, treating familiar and unfamiliar people differently is a basic aspect of human behavior. A child who did not achieve the ability to do this would be a very odd person indeed and would not fit well into any human society. As a general rule, we give to and take from familiars and not strangers, we tell secrets to and trust familiars and not strangers, and we are more inclined to be sexually intimate with potential mates we are well acquainted with than those we have just met (twenty-something guys, I don’t want to hear about this-- it’s true of most people, anyway!). By about 9 months, babies have usually come to share these kinds of attitudes with the rest of their species.
If I ever designed a greeting card, I would make it one that said to young parents, “Congratulations! Your baby was afraid of a stranger today!”. That leap forward in development is far more significant than the first step or the first word, and it’s worth celebrating.
I looked at this correspondence and it suddenly struck me-- many people would think we were nuts to say such things. Are we people who enjoy being mean to babies? What could possess us to think it’s good when they cry? Well, there is method in our apparent madness.
I had been concerned about this particular baby, whose family lives on my street. When he was about 6 months old and was outdoors with his mother, I walked up and started a conversation. I noticed that the baby never looked at me and didn’t try to get our attention. But he did seem preoccupied with something he was looking at, so I thought perhaps I wasn’t very interesting in comparison. Then, several months later, I saw mother and baby outdoors again-- and the same thing happened. I recounted this to several colleagues at a meeting, and all expressed concern and asked whether the baby was in an early intervention program. They all felt I should talk to the mother about the matter--- although they conceded that she probably wouldn’t speak to me for two years if I did!
Thank goodness, a week or so later, when I walked up to the family, the little guy clouded up, began to whimper, and turned away from me to look at his parents. They were embarrassed that he was being “rude” to me, but I congratulated them on their good work and assured them that this was exactly what he should be doing.
What was going on here? Why do I think this infant should cry when he sees me-- or any other person who is not very familiar to him? I think so, because this changed behavior is an excellent marker of good development. Babies in the first months of life don’t “make strange”. They respond in about the same way to any smiling, sociable person. Somewhere around seven months the baby becomes wary and looks suspiciously and seriously at unfamiliar people, checking them out in the way Margaret Mahler labeled “customs inspection”. After inspecting a friendly-looking new person for a while, the baby warms up and gets sociable. By 8 or 9 months, most babies who have lived in a stable family or other care situation will respond to strangers with anxiety and do their best to turn away and look for or at their “own people”. A common scenario is that the mother is carrying the baby at the grocery store or other public place, and a friendly stranger approaches to talk to the baby. The baby turns away, puts his or her face against the mother, or moves to look to the mother’s other side. Friendly stranger knows what to do about this, and rushes around to look at the baby from the other direction! (Repeat ad lib until baby is bawling and mother is completely frustrated but trying to be polite to this person, who loves babies but doesn’t really think they’re people.)
These changes in the baby don’t occur because there have been bad experiences, or because the baby is spoiled and willful, or because of emotional disturbance. They are natural developments that take place in almost all babies who have had a normal basic level of adult care and social interaction, and they are good evidence that the baby is on a normal schedule of development. If a family baby of 9 months did not show reluctance to deal with a stranger, we would need to ask what the problem was; there might be difficulties with vision or hearing, or even with mental development in general. If a baby who had been cared for by many different people, or often moved from one care setting to another, and was friendly to everyone, we might well conclude that he or she needed to have a long period of consistent care from a few people, in order to have an opportunity to develop special relationships.
But why is it a good thing for babies to avoid strangers? It seems like a nuisance from a practical point of view. It means we can’t leave them with babysitters or at a new day care arrangement, without a whole lot of fuss. It means that people who care a lot about the baby but don’t see her often may be offended when the baby snubs them. What’s to like about it?
One good thing is that this situation acts to some extent like an “invisible playpen” and helps to keep babies near adults who care about them even when they’ve begun to crawl or walk. The safety factors that apply in modern times were probably even more important when our remote ancestors reared their children in wild and dangerous settings, and wandering away might lead to becoming a meal for a predator. In addition, though, treating familiar and unfamiliar people differently is a basic aspect of human behavior. A child who did not achieve the ability to do this would be a very odd person indeed and would not fit well into any human society. As a general rule, we give to and take from familiars and not strangers, we tell secrets to and trust familiars and not strangers, and we are more inclined to be sexually intimate with potential mates we are well acquainted with than those we have just met (twenty-something guys, I don’t want to hear about this-- it’s true of most people, anyway!). By about 9 months, babies have usually come to share these kinds of attitudes with the rest of their species.
If I ever designed a greeting card, I would make it one that said to young parents, “Congratulations! Your baby was afraid of a stranger today!”. That leap forward in development is far more significant than the first step or the first word, and it’s worth celebrating.
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