91av

Love at Goon Park by Deborah Blum, Perseus, $26, ISBN 0738202789 Reviewed by Louise Barrett

TINY infant monkeys clinging desperately to crude artificial “cloth-mothers” seems a gratuitously brutal way of showing the importance of the mother-offspring bond in primates. I first came across Harry Harlow’s experiments on infant monkeys as an undergraduate and found the images of isolated infants disturbing. Indeed, I couldn’t work out why such experiments were necessary when the findings seemed so obvious.

Now, thanks to Deborah Blum’s enormously interesting biography of Harlow, I realise that, during the first half of the 20th century, the importance of “mother love” wasn’t obvious at all. With behaviourism as the dominant paradigm in psychology, the bond between mother and offspring was seen merely as cupboard love: babies were attached only to the breast, their source of food.

According to John Watson, the father of behaviourism, cuddling and paying too much attention to babies would only result in needy, clingy children. Going one better as usual, the well-known radical behaviourist, B.F. Skinner, developed the “baby tender”, a soundproof, climate-controlled box with a window, in which he raised his baby daughter, Debbie. Children in orphanages and hospitals were also cared for in the cold, clinical manner approved by the psychologists. But these children didn’t develop into confident, independent beings: they were deeply disturbed.

Blum shows how Harlow’s experiments played a key role. They showed that a mother was more than just a regular food supply: she was safety, comfort and a way to learn about the world. More than this, Blum shows beautifully how we are all a product of the times in which we live and that we cannot judge the past by today’s standards.

Harlow wasn’t alone in his harsh treatment of animals, and he was by no means the worst. This isn’t to excuse him and Blum does not shy away from the ethical and moral issues Harlow’s work raised, in particular the chilling and horrific “pit of despair” experiments on infant monkeys. She presents a clear-eyed, balanced view of how this work was (and is) regarded by the scientific establishment and the animal welfare movement.

As a piece of science history, Love at Goon Park is a marvellous read. While I’m still not wild about Harry, I now understand a little of what drove this compulsive, dedicated man.