Deborah Blum Perseus Publishing 2002 FROM THE DUST JACKET For eons, love was the province of poets and dreamers. Scientists considered it unworthy of real study. Yet, in the middle of the last century, one scientist had the courage and the curiosity to uncover the true power of love, and he forever changed the way we think about human relationships. This is the story of that great transformation. We take it for granted today that we should kiss our children, hug our friends, and comfort our partners. But until recently, the "experts" thought otherwise. In fact, in the early 20th century, affection between parents and children was very much discouraged- psychologists thought it would create needy and demanding offspring; doctors were convinced it would spread infectious disease. It took a revolution in psychology to overturn these beliefs, and prove that a loving touch not only didn't harm babies but in fact ensured their emotional and intellectual growth. In Love at Goon Park, Pulitzer Prize winner Deborah Blum charts this profound cultural shift by tracing the story of the man who made it possible: a brilliant, alcoholic, work- obsessed psychologist named Harry Harlow. Pursuing the idea that human affection could be understood, studied, even measured, Harlow arrived at his conclusions by conducting experiments-some beautiful, some profoundly troubling-on the primates in his University of Wisconsin laboratory. Paradoxically, his darkest experiments may have the brightest legacy: By studying neglect and its life-altering consequences, Harlow confirmed love's central role in shaping not only how we feel but also how we think. The more children experience affection, he discovered, the more curious they become about the world. Love, it turns out, makes people smarter. But as this meticulously researched and masterfully written book shows, there was a side of Harlow as dark as some of his experiments. An eccentric, driven scientist with a fondness for alcohol, he was a difficult husband and a distant father who spent precious little time with his own children, even as he preached the importance of bonding. Yet Harlow's legacy is truly monumental-and his reputation, in Blum's hands, is at last restored. The biography of both a man and an idea, Love at Goon Park weaves the dramatic story of Harlow's life into the first in-depth examination of his work, illuminating a post-War culture in the throes of change. Through the lens of Harry Harlow, Blum ultimately invites us to examine ourselves-the way we love others and are loved in return. Deborah Blum won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for her writing and reporting about primate experiments and ethics, a subject that she further explored in her first book, The Monkey Wars. Her second book, Sex on the Brain, was a New York Times Notable Book for 1997. Blum is a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin, and president- elect of the National Association of Science Writers. She lives with her husband and two sons in Madison, Wisconsin. CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Prologue: Love, Airborne 1 1. The Invention of Harry Harlow 7 2. Untouched by Human Hands 31 3. The Alpha Male 61 4. The Curiosity Box 89 5. The Nature of Love 113 6. The Perfect Mother 143 7. Chains of Love 171 8. The Baby in the Box 207 9. Cold Hearts and Warm Shoulders 231 10. Love Lessons 257 Epilogue: Extreme Love 291 Notes 309 Index 327 PREFACE In the early spring light, the Henry Vilas Zoological Park remains almost colorless, a place of black branch and pale ground. The upper Midwest shakes off winter slowly. Even as April dawns, the trees just hint at buds at the branch tips. The grass is beige stubble, the green bleached away by frost and snow. The faint bite of cold stirs the animals into protesting motion: the two lions prowling their woody enclosure, the one grizzly pacing his rocky ledge. This is a small zoo, after all, and a visitor walking fast can travel from reptile house to primate house-pretty much the length of the zoo-in a bare five minutes. I'm a primate junkie myself. My footsteps, hollow-sounding on the cold ground, inevitably carry me to this building. I will stand admiring the plumy-tailed colobus- almost weightless in their grace- until my children drag me away. I have been known to loudly correct other visitors who tell their children that chimpanzees are monkeys. And I am eternally fascinated by the orangutans, with their ancient faces, gray as prehistoric stone, and their powerful bodies, deep bronze hair over fluid muscle. Harry Harlow's research began here, in this pocket-sized zoo in Madison, Wisconsin, with a pair of orangutans. Those old apes are long gone, as are the old primate cages- smaller and sparer than the big bright enclosures of today-and Harry himself died some twenty years ago. I come here anyway, some days, as if I could find his ghost still watching the deliberate movements of the orangutans, just feeling that first tingle of kinship, the recognition that the animal on the other side of the bars is also watching you. Until now, I had not realized how much writing a biography is an invitation to a haunting. For more than three years, Harry Harlow has inhabited my life. He's been an uncomfortable resident, as prickly as a spectral hedgehog. When I first started the book, my editor sent me an essay on whether a biographer must like her subject. It was an apt question. I didn't know whether I was going to like Harry Harlow. I thought, correctly, that he would be a sharp-edged subject-fascinating and troubling, and underneath the prickles the velvety gleam of brilliance. I wanted to write about him for exactly that uneasy mixture. Simple subjects, sometimes to my sorrow, have never interested me. I wanted to see his ghost walk, I suppose. I wanted to remind people that his work stays with us, still offering insight and promise. I thought-I still think-that he's been forgotten too soon. You would have to call me an unlikely chronicler of Harry Harlow. Certainly, many of his friends have thought of me that way. I first wrote about him, more briefly, in an earlier book, The Monkey Wars, which explored ethical dilemmas of primate research. I wrote that book almost ten years ago-as I said, I'm a primate junkie. When I was done, my editor at Oxford said to me, "Harry Harlow is the most interesting person in this book. Would you be interested in writing a biography?" I could hardly refuse fast enough. I wanted a change. I was packing my monkey bags away and starting on a book about sex differences. Beyond that, my Harry Harlow chapter had made a lot of people angry. That vision-apples to oranges with this book- looked at Harry through the lens of the animal rights movement, which loathed him. Not surprisingly, this was not a focus that appealed to Harlow supporters. Many of them didn't want to talk to me again. Ever. Back then, I didn't want to talk to them, either. So I started researching Sex on the Brain and found myself, in the course of exploring biology of behavior, talking to all kinds of primate researchers. That still didn't make me reconsider. It was thinking about children and parents who love them-and parents who don't-that really brought me back to this chilly path at the zoo. A couple years after the second book, when I was still writing about biology and behavior, I contracted with Mother Jones to do a two-part series on the science of neglected children. It is so hard to do this kind of reporting, to deliberately immerse oneself in the bewilderment and grief of children pushed away by their parents, that I have to take a minute to say here how much I admire the counselors and child advocates who stay there, who live there the way journalists do not, who work to salvage lives. They are genuinely unsung heroes. While I was exploring the power of those parent-child relationships, I started thinking about other unrecognized heroes. "This is Harry Harlow's work," I realized. I rethought what he had done, not the primate research so much but the pure power of it, the way that it forced you to confront how much relationships matter in life. And that's this book, partly a biography of Harry Harlow, partly the biography of a surprisingly recent idea in science-that love counts. A book is always a journey and at the end of this one, I asked myself whether I had learned to like Harry Harlow. Many of his family members, friends, and colleagues did eventually agree to talk with me. "I didn't like your first book and I don't really like you," one scientist told me. "But I want to have input." I'm not the only one to wonder whether I would develop affection for Harry. Easy question, tricky answer. He makes me laugh, even secondhand. He makes me think about friendship and parenthood and partnership in ways that I never had before. He still seems to me an edgy companion. And he seems wholly real. So, like Harry, the answer is complicated. Sometimes I do like him, sometimes not at all. In the end-it's the both that makes him such a terrific subject for a biography exasperating, sometimes, enchanting other times, never boring. And his weaknesses give a curious strength to his work-he was bitterly honest, sometimes to his own detriment. He was willing to take his personal problems-loneliness and isolation and depression, even-and use them in his research. I do return to the ethics of primate research in this book, but only briefly. This is a biographical story and during Harry Harlow's lifetime animal ethics did not dominate the discussion. So you will find those questions in the final chapter. I have touched lightly on other aspects of Harry Harlow's research, as well. He was such an eccentric character, he had such a restless intellect, that if I had followed every idea he pursued, I could have meandered through half the history of psychology. So I didn't write about his interest in neurochemistry or his experiments with infant retardation or his early work on brain structures. I didn't include every funny story or interesting anecdote that people shared with me, either. Oh, I wanted to put in everything. I would have crammed in every recollection if I could only have had another five hundred pages or so. And I would-primate junkie again-have written more about his research into the natural intelligence of primates if I could have persuaded myself that monkey cognition was central to the story of love. So I acknowledge in advance that this is not an all- encompassing biography, or a detailed history of psychology. It is rather a journey with one scientist, a pursuit of the role of relationships in human behavior. Everyone needs "a solid foundation of affection," Harry once said, and this book is about his efforts to dig down to that emotional bedrock. I wonder about those fundamental lessons as I stand inside the primate house, shutting the glass doors on the slow thaw outside. I watch the orangutans with their Stone Age faces and think about how we learn about love. The orangutans at the Vilas zoo have a new baby. The mother holds it, heart to heart, as if letting go would violate all the natural laws of life. Perhaps science is finally catching up with common sense, as Harry liked to say. Perhaps the answer is as simple as the view through the glass: mother and child so close together that you might imagine the two hearts beating as one. Deborah Blum Madison, Wisconsin April 2002 WHERE TO ORDER Perseus Books Group Customer Service Department 5500 Central Avenue Boulder, CO 80301 PHONE: (800) 386-5656 FAX: (303) 449-3356 Email: westview.orders@perseusbooks.com Web site: www.perseuspublishing.com PRICE: $26.00 ISBN: 0-7382-0278-9 Posted Date: 10-09-02
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