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Authors: Deborah Blum

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Notes
This book is based on a variety of sources—interviews, correspondence, Harry Harlow's unpublished memoirs/journal, books, magazines, newspapers, and research journals. Unless otherwise indicated in these notes, the comments of Harry Harlow's colleagues, students, and family members are based on direct interviews. Many people interviewed are not quoted in the text and yet their comments and perspectives did help shape the story, and contribute to the portrait of Harry Harlow, his family, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison's psychology department and primate laboratories during the time that he worked there. In that regard I would like to recognize the help given by: Leonard Berkowitz, professor emeritus of psychology, UW-Madison; and Harry's former graduate students and colleagues and friends: Dan Joslyn, Robert Bowman, Robert Dodsworth, John Bromer, Albert Erlebacher, Billey Levenson Fink, Leslie Hicks, Kenneth Michaels, Gil French, Carl Thompson, Arthur Riopelle, Joyce Rosevear, Bill Seay, Frank Farley, Brendan Maher, Greg Oden, William Prokasy, Eleanor Schmidt, and Marge Harris. The information they provided was invaluable to getting this story right.
Prologue: Love, Airborne
“The Measure of Love,”
Conquest,
produced by the Public Affairs Department of CBS News; producer, Michael Sklar; writer, S. S. Schweitzer; director, Harold Mayer; aired November 1, 1959. Ernest R. Hilgard,
Psychology in America: A Historical Survey
(San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987).
Harry Harlow on proximity, quoted in John P. Gluck, “Harry Harlow: Lessons on Explanations, Ideas and Mentorship,”
American Journal of Primatology
7 (1984): 139–146.
Chapter One: The Invention of Harry Harlow
Susan Fulton Welty,
A Fair Field
(Detroit: Harlow Press, 1968); Charles J. Fulton,
History of Jefferson County, Iowa
(Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1914); Robert P. Long,
Homegrown: An Iowa Memoir
(selfpublished, 1988); Susan Fulton Welty,
Man of Medicine and Merriment
(Rockton, Ill.: Basley Prington, 1991);
The Quill,
Fairfield High School Yearbook, 1913–1926. Harry's nephew, who also goes by the family name of Robert Israel, has archived a family history and photos at the Fairfield Public Library. It includes the photos of Harry's parents and an Israel family tree that goes all the way back to seventeenth-century England.
Harry Harlow's recollections of Fairfield are from unpublished journals /autobiography, courtesy of Robert Israel. Family history and photos archived at Fairfield Public Library. Lon Israel's work records are from the Fairfield City Directory and from Harlow's unpublished descriptions. There are also some excellent descriptions of Harlow's childhood in W. Richard Dukelow,
The Alpha Males: An Early History of the Regional Primate Research Centers
(Lanham, Mass.: University Press of America, 1995).
Harry Harlow describes some of his early educational experiences in the book he co-edited with Clara Mears Harlow, and in “Birth of the Surrogate Mother,” a chapter in
Discovery Processes in Modern Biology: People and Processes in Biological Discovery,
ed. W. R. Klemm (Huntington, N.Y.: R. E. Krieger Publishing Co., 1977). There are similar stories—as well as childhood background—in “The Evolution of Harlow Research,” an introduction written by Clara Mears Harlow,
Learning to Love: The Selected Papers of H. F. Harlow,
ed. Clara Mears Harlow (New York: Praeger, 1986).
Background on Stanford and its psychology department: Annual Reports of the President of Stanford University, 1923–1931; Margaret Kimball,
Stanford: A Celebration in Pictures
(Stanford: Stanford University Press);
Jane Stanford's Inscriptions
(a publication of Stanford Memorial Church); correspondence from the Stanford archives between Lewis Terman and university officials. Background on Walter Miles and Calvin Stone in the
Reports,
an annual Stanford publication, which included activity summaries written by department heads. Lewis Terman filed the reports from 1924–1930, the period that I surveyed; in Ernest R. Hilgard,
Psychology in America: A Historical Survey
(San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987); and in John A. Popplestone and Marion White McPherson,
An Illustrated History of American Psychology
(Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 1994); and from Harlow's personal recollections. The story of Calvin Stone and the rat bite incident is from Carol Tavris, “Harry, You Are Going to Go Down in History As the Father of the Cloth Mother,”
Psychology Today
(April 1973).
Background on Lewis Terman from Joel Shurkin,
Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up
(Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1992); Henry L. Minton,
Lewis M. Terman: Pioneer in Psychological Testing
(New York: New York University Press, 1988); and from the Archives of the History of American Psychology, archived correspondence between May V. Seagoe and Harry Harlow, Nancy Bayley, Jessie Minton, and Robert Bernreuter concerning Seagoe's biography of Terman,
Terman and the Gifted
(Los Altos, Calif.: William Kaufmann, 1975). Terman's research is also thoroughly discussed in Hilgard and other history of psychology texts, including John A. Popplestone and Marion White McPherson,
An Illustrated History of American Psychology
(Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 1994); C. James Goodwin,
A History of Modern Psychology
(New York: J. Wiley, 1999). For further background on the mixture of politics and science that encircles IQ testing, I used Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman,
The IQ Controversy
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1990). The story of Harry Harlow's name change is cited in Richard Dukelow,
The Alpha Males: An Early History of the Regional Primate Research Centers
(Lanham, Mass.: University Press of America, 1995); in Tavris's
Psychology Today
story, in Clara Harlow's brief biography of her husband, and in Harry's unpublished journal. Walter Miles's letter to Harry's father is archived at the library of the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center. Other context is provided by interviews with William Mason and Dorothy Eichorn.
Chapter Two: Untouched by Human Hands
Records on the early history of foundling homes from Sarah Blaffer Hrdy,
Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), and from William P. Letchworth,
Homes of Homeless Children: A Report on Orphan Asylums and Other Institutions for the Care of Children
(reprint, New York: Arno Press, Inc., 1974). Henry Chapin's paper is discussed in Robert Sapolsky, “How the Other Half Heals,”
Discover,
vol. 19, no. 4 (April 1998). Chapin himself coauthored seven editions of a book on the subject. The first was Henry Dwight Chapin and Godfrey Roger Pisek,
Diseases of Infants and Children
(New York: Wood, 1909). (Chapin's report on infant deaths in institutions was published as “A Plea for Accurate Statistics in Infant's Institutions,”
Journal of American Pediatrics Society
27 [1915]: 180.)
L. Emmett Holt, R. L. Duffus, and L. Emmett Holt, Jr.,
Pioneer of a Children's Century
(Appleton, London), 295; in Robert Karen,
Becoming
Attached: Unfolding the Mystery of the Infant-Mother Bond and Its Impact on Later Life
(New York: Warner Books, 1994); in Robert Sapolsky, “How the Other Half Heals,”
Discover,
vol. 19
,
no. 4 (April 1998); in Robert Sapolsky,
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
(New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1994); and in Sylvia Brody,
Patterns of Mothering
(New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1956).
H. Arthur Allbutt,
The Wife's Handbook: How a Woman Should Order Herself During Pregnancy, in the Lying-In Room, and After Delivery: With Hints on the Management of the Baby, and on Other Matters of Importance, Necessary to Be Known By Married Women
(London: R. Forder, 1888).
Descriptions of childhood medical wards in Harry Bakwin, “Loneliness in Infants,”
American Journal of Diseases of Children,
vol. 63 (1942); in Harry Bakwin, “Psychological Aspects of Pediatrics: Emotional Deprivation in Infants,”
Journal of Pediatrics
(1948); in Robert Karen,
Becoming Attached: Unfolding the Mystery of the Infant-Mother Bond and Its Impact on Later Life
(New York: Warner Books, 1994).
Cooney's work is described in Marshall H. Klaus and John H. Kennell,
Parent-Infant Bonding
(St. Louis: C. V. Mosby Co., 1982). Another excellent summary can be found in Jules Older,
Touching Is Healing
(New York: Stein & Day, 1982).
Concerns that mothers don't want to touch their children are outlined in C. Anderson Aldrich and Mary Aldrich,
Babies Are Human Beings Too
(New York: The Macmillan Co., 1938).
Brenneman cited in Bakwin, “Loneliness in Infants.” Background on Watson: Kerry W. Buckley,
Mechanical Man: John Broadus Watson and the Beginnings of Behaviorism
(New York: Guilford Press, 1989); James T. Todd and Edward K. Morris, eds.,
Modern Perspectives on John B. Watson and Classical Behaviorism
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994); and David Cohen,
John B. Watson, the Founder of Behaviourism: A Biography
(London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979).
Watson and Stanley Hall's perspectives on parenting also discussed in Ernest R. Hilgard,
Psychology in America: A Historical Survey
(San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987); and C. James Goodwin,
A History of Modern Psychology
(New York: J. Wiley, 1999). The receptive audience of parents is discussed in Ann Hulbert, “The Century of the Child,”
The Wilson Quarterly
(winter 1999); and in Kim Klausner, “Worried Women: the Popularization of Scientific Motherhood in the 1920s,” published on the History Students Association Home Page of San Francisco State University (
http://www.sfsu.edu/-has/ex-post-facto/mothers.html
) and explored in
Molly Ladd-Taylor, ed.,
Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers' Letters to the Children's Bureau, 1915–1932
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986).
Hospital policies discussed in the books of Klaus and Kennell and of Jules Older. The Minnesota “Child Care and Training” books were published by the Institute of Child Welfare, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis; I surveyed editions starting in 1929 and continuing through 1943. The publications of the federal Child's Bureau from 1914–1963 are reprinted in
Child Rearing Literature of Twentieth Century America
(New York: Arno Press, 1973). William Goldfarb, “The Effects of Early Institutional Care on Adolescent Personality,”
Journal of Experimental Education,
vol. 12, no. 2 (December 1943); William Goldfarb, “Variations in Adolescent Adjustment of Institutionally-Reared Children,
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
17 (1947). Levy and Bender profiled in Karen,
Becoming Attached.
Issues of child isolation discussed in David M. Levy,
Maternal Overprotection
(New York, Columbia University Press, 1943).
Spitz and Katherine Wolf appear in Sheldon Gardner and Gwendolyn Stevens,
Red Vienna and the Golden Age of Psychology 1918–1938
(Praeger: New York, 1979). The work of both Spitz and Robertson is beautifully described in Karen's
Becoming Attached.
Karen's book is also, of course, a biography of John Bowlby, and includes a detailed discussion of his battles with Freudian psychiatry.
Of Bowlby's writings, I relied primarily on his three-volume series: John Bowlby,
Attachment and Loss,
2d ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1982), and
A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development
(Basic Books, 1988). Specific articles included: John Bowlby, “Maternal Care and Health,” World Health Organization (WHO) Monograph 2 (Geneva: 1951); John Bowlby, “The Nature of the Child's Tie to His Mother,”
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis
39 (1958): 350–373; John Bowlby, “Grief and Mourning in Infancy,”
The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child,
vol. 15 (1960).
Both Karen's and Hrdy's books provide an excellent look at Bowlby's work and its influence. For a scientific overview of the field, I used Jude Cassidy and Phillip R. Shaver, eds.,
Handbook of Attachment
(New York: The Guildford Press, 1999).
Although the tensions between Bowlby and Freudian psychiatry are discussed in the books cited above, I also consulted Edward Shorter,
A History of Psychiatry
(New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997); and Harry K. Wells,
Sigmund Freud, A Pavlovian Critique
(London: Lawrence & Wishard, 1960).
Chapter Three: The Alpha Male
Harlow's first experiences at Wisconsin are detailed in his published memoir, “Birth of the Surrogate Mother,”
Discovery Processes in Modern Biology,
ed. W. R. Klemm (Huntington, N.Y.: R. E. Krieger, 1977); and in Clara Harlow's introduction in
Learning to Love: The Selected Papers of H. F. Harlow
(New York: Praeger, 1986)
.
The descriptions of Clara Mears and many of her comments—here and throughout the book—are drawn from the questionnaires she filled out for Lewis Terman, now archived at the Stanford University psychology department, and from correspondence in those files between Clara, her mother, and Terman.
Gordon Allport's rebellion against rat research is discussed in
Rebels Within the Ranks: A Psychologist's Critique of Scientific Authority and Democratic Realities in New Deal America,
Katherine Pandora, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Allport's career is also outlined in Ernest R. Hilgard,
Psychology in America: A Historical Survey
(San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987).

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