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Chapter 1: Mother-Love: Worst-Case Scenarios

The human need to have our mother near is the theory that is expressed in chapter one. Chapter one goes through a time line of how we, as humans, came across this theory. The author tends to talk about and describe how as babies the basic need to have mother around is just as important as having food, water, and clean diapers. The author gives examples of children who were adopted after infancy and children whom had to spend significant amounts of time away from their mothers during their infant years had suffered from infections and "hospitalism", and also severe depression and lonliness. Researchers such as Levy, Bender, Bakwin, Goldfarb, and Spitz had all published papers but very few in the psychoanalysts world paid very much attention.

Infants whom were put up for adoption were not adopted until after their infant years because doctors found that many children in orphanages were prone to not being very intelligent later on in life and even some being mildly retarded with low IQ scores. Doctors also said that the children should gain an attachment to someone who was not going to be a permanent parent figure. This of course later changed with findings from the above doctors and researchers. Another important concept of this chapter is that some of the babies that were hospitalized in Bellvue were dying off. They thought this to be due to germs and bacteria and went to extreme cases to try and protect the babies from this until Bakwin, who took over the Bellevue in 1931, changed the routines to paying more attention to the children, having more contact, and play with them. The infection rate in the hospital went down. Also an important note is that when babies were placed in a good home that the symptoms of "hospitalism" went down.

In my own opinion of this chapter, I can't believe that it took doctors that long to figure out that a baby needs attention and love in the very early y...