When they grew up, the monkeys in Harlow’s experiments failed to form normal relationships. What is the impact of privation and deprivation on human children?
Marcin Sadlowski/Fotolia
The effect of childhood on later relationships is a staple of romantic fiction. For example, the corrosive effects of a troubled upbringing have been examined in everything from Great Expectations to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Hunger Games. However, these are fiction — what happens in real life?
Unsurprisingly, the psychoanalysts had something to say on this matter. Freud believed that failure to resolve the early stages of development resulted in the individual becoming irrationally obsessed with one of the early stages of development, often with disastrous long-term consequences.
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