Bowlbys Theory of Deprivation- A01
- Created by: MollyL20
- Created on: 10-12-20 15:30
View mindmap
- Bowlbys theory of deprivation
- This theory focused on the idea that continual presence of nurture from a mother or a mother-substitute is essential for normal psychological development of babies and toddlers
- Bowlby famously said: 'mother-love in infancy and childhood is important to mental health as are vitamins and proteins for physical health'
- Separation vs deprivation
- Separation simply means that the child isn't in the presence of a PAF and only becomes a problem when it turns into deprivation
- Brief separations particularly where the child is a substitute caregiver, aren't significant for development but extended separations can lead to deprivation which causes harm
- The critical period
- Bowlby saw the first 30 months of life as a critical period for psychological development.
- If the child has not had a suitable substitute mother care then he believed that they will suffer with psychological development was inevitable
- Effects of development
- Intellectual development
- Bowlby believed that if children were deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period they would have suffered delayed intellectual development characterised by abnormally low IQ
- For example, Goldfarb (1947) found lower IQ in children who had remained in institutions as opposed to those that were in foster and thus had a higher level of emotional care
- Emotional development
- Bowlby identified affectionless psychopaths, the inability to experience guilt or strong emotion for others
- This prevents the person developing normal relationships and is associated with criminality
- Affectionless psychopaths cannot appreciate the feelings of victims and so lack remorse for their actions
- Intellectual development
- 44 thieves study
- Procedure
- 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing. They were all interviews for signs of affectionless psychopathy (lack of guilt, lack of empathy, lack of affection)
- Their families were also interviewed in order to establish whether the 'thieves' had prolonged separation from their mothers
- A control group of non-criminal but emotionally disturbed young people was set up to see how often maternal separation/ deprivation occurred in the children who were not thieves
- Findings
- 14/44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths of this 14, 12 had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the first 2 years of their life. In contrast, only 5 of the remaining 30 thieves had experienced separations
- Of the control group, only 2 out of 44 had experienced long separation. It was concluded that prolonged early separations/ depravations caused affectionless psychopath
- Procedure
Comments
No comments have yet been made