Rene spitz emotional deprivation disorder

Abstract

In 1945, the émigré psychoanalyst René Spitz published a landmark article in which he suggested that babies cared for in institutions commonly suffered from ‘hospitalism’ and failed to thrive. According to Spitz this was the case because such babies were deprived of ‘maternal care, maternal stimulation, and maternal love.’ Historical interest in separation research and the development of the concept of maternal deprivation has tended to focus on the 1940s and 50s. The term ‘hospitalism’, however, was coined at the end of the nineteenth century and by 1945 the question of whether or not babies could be cared for in institutions had already been debated for a number of decades by an international community of paediatricians and developmental psychologists, later joined by psychoanalysts. Criss-crossing national boundaries and exploring debates over the nature, causes, and prevention of ‘hospitalism’, this article elucidates the changing understandings of the impact on babies of living in institutions.

Keywords: hospitalism, separation research, infant hospitals, foundling homes, paediatrics, child psychology, psychoanalysis

In 1945, the émigré psychoanalyst René Spitz published a landmark article in which he suggested that babies cared for in institutions commonly suffered from a condition called ‘hospitalism’ and failed to thrive. Spitz reported that babies he observed in a foundling hospital became withdrawn, lost weight, suffered from severe developmental decline and many of them died. The causes of this, according to Spitz, were to be found in the fact that the babies were deprived of ‘maternal care, maternal stimulation, and maternal love’. He subsequently distilled his views on the catastrophic consequences of institutional care of babies in a harrowing short film released in 1947, entitled Grief: A Peril in Infancy. Spitz was to become one of the principal spokespersons of the dangers of maternal separation in the United States in the

If you are familiar with the field of psychology, perhaps you have heard the story of Genie.

Genie was raised in complete isolation in the 1950s and ’60s. She was emotionally deprived and physically abused by her parents. What she endured as a small child was absolutely devastating and gained lots of attention from the media and psychological researchers.

Genie is an extreme example of emotional deprivation. But the reality is that emotional deprivation is, by its very definition, extreme.

Childhood Emotional Deprivation: This happens when parents exhibit an extreme absence of emotional attention to their child. Emotional deprivation is often, if not usually, accompanied by child physical abuse and is most documented in orphanages or abusive families.

Childhood Emotional Neglect: This happens when parents fail to respond enough to their child’s emotional needs. Unlike emotional deprivation, emotional neglect can be much more subtle. It often happens in non-abusive families. As the absence of something (emotional attention and emotional validation), it is often difficult to spot. A child’s parents may meet many of their needs, like their physical, material, and educational needs, but the child’s emotional needs—like every child’s natural need to be seen, deeply understood, and emotionally validated by their parents—go significantly unacknowledged and unmet.

Once noticed by outsiders, children like Genie can get assistance and resources. Emotionally deprived children can enter the foster care system and may be adopted by loving, emotionally attentive parents. Of course, that is the best-case scenario.

An emotionally neglected child, on the other hand, typically does not get noticed by outsiders. Children who are emotionally neglected tend to go under the radar, unaware that anything is going wrong for them. No one to help… no one to notice, not even themselves.

Emotional deprivation and emotional

Rene Spitz proved that the child's lack of contact with a carer consisting in touching, hugging, stroking, kissing leads to a sharp decline in immunity of the immune and nervous system. In extreme cases, the child's lack of contact with someone who cares for them can lead to such a weakening of the body that ends in death, even despite of good emotional care. Those children who received the necessary minimum sensitivity to survive physically and mentally develop much better.

Austrian-American psychoanalyst

René Árpád Spitz (January 29, 1887 in Vienna – September 14, 1974 in Denver) was an Austrian-American psychoanalyst. He is best known for his analysis of hospitalized infants in which he found links between marasmus and death with unmothered infants. Spitz also made significant contributions to the school of ego psychology.

Biography

René Spitz was born in Vienna, Austria (Austro-Hungarian), and died in Denver, Colorado. From a wealthy Jewish family background, he spent most of his childhood in Hungary. After finishing his medical studies in 1910, Spitz discovered the work of Sigmund Freud. In 1932, he left Austria and settled in Paris for the next six years, where he taught psychoanalysis at the École Normale Supérieure. In 1939, he emigrated to the United States, and worked as a psychiatrist at the Mount Sinai hospital. From 1940 to 1943, Spitz served as a visiting professor at several universities, before teaching at the University of Denver and eventually settling in Colorado.

Spitz based his observations and experiments on psychoanalytic findings in the style developed by Freud. Where Freud performed his famed psychoanalytic studies on adult subjects, Spitz performed his empirical research on infants.

In 1935, Spitz began research in the area of child development. He was one of the first researchers who used direct observation of children as an experimental method, studying both healthy and unhealthy subjects. His most significant contributions to the field of psychoanalysis came from his studies of the effects of maternal and emotional deprivation on infants.

Spitz valued several aspects: Infant observation and assessment, anaclitic depression (hospitali