Our Government's pursuit of the War on Drugs is such a powerful
political issue that little energy is devoted to assessing the facts.
While most citizens understand that it is politically correct to blame
most of the ills of our society on drug taking, it is difficult to find
any hard data which supports the amount of damage that is claimed. Nor
is there a great deal of incentive on the part of our current government
leaders to take a good look at other possible causes for our social
difficulties.
Far more of our difficulties than most adults are willing to admit arise
from deteriorating relationships. Well conducted psychedelic
experiences that penetrate our defense levels reveal that we are all
intimately connected. Carl Jung, world-renowned psychologist, reached
the same conclusion in arriving at his concept of the Collective
Unconscious. We deeply crave intimacy. Loss of intimacy and increased
separation from others is very painful and hard to acknowledge. Few
people are aware of the various kinds of damage incurred through
emotional separation, through our failure to understand, honor, and
nurture each other. The information excerpted below gives evidence of
the serious deterioration resulting from lack of human contact in the
early childhood years.
Spitz followed the development of 34 infants in their own homes, but he has not
reported on these observations; he used them, instead, as a control for two contrast-
ing institutional groups, each with a population of 90 to 100 babies. In one institution,
called the Nursery, unmarried mothers were encouraged to care for their babies
themselves, or with fairly adequate substitutes - i.e., other young women in the
institution - when the mother had to be away. The over-all ratio of care was about
two babies to one "mother." The other institution, called the Foundlinghome, had
facilities for physical hygiene and nourishment at least as good as in the "Nursery",
in fact, better as regards professional medical standards. Here there was no positive
cruelty toward the babies, but the nursing staff was so limited that each nurse cared
for about ten babies. The two institutions were selected for study because the groups
involved were essentially similar in ethnic and economic background and the infants
apparently about equal in endowment at the age of four months. (In the "Foundling-
home" regime, the mothers usually suckled the babies for a few months but then
renounced their motherhood completely.)
Considered as a group, the Nursery babies made normal progress as determined
by (1) the general impression of activity and emotional responsiveness, (2) maintenance
of the development quotient (DQ) on regularly administered psychological tests, and
(3) physical examination and health record. There were no deaths and no serious
epidemics, even though only common-sense precautions were taken against infection.
The fate of the Foundlinghome babies was tragic on all these counts: (a) The
general impression was one of apathy and deathly silence. (b) The mean DQ of the
group dropped progressively with age to a group mean of 45 (low-grade Moron). This
statistical finding is made more vivid by the statement that among 21 children aged
2-1/2 to 4-1/2 years (there were 91 in the total group), only five could walk unassisted,
eight could not even stand alone, only one had a vocabulary of a dozen words, six could
not talk at all, and eleven had only two words. (c) The health record shows that, despite
elaborate medical precautions ("No person whose clothes and hands were not sterilized
could approach the babies"), 34 of these 91 babies died. All but one of the older group
was seriously underweight, despite a carefully supervised and varied diet."
____________________________________________________________________
*Spitz also used the motion-picture camera as a recording device. His films, notably
the sequence called Grief (produced by Dr. Rene' A. Spitz, distributed by the New York
University Film Library), are more revealing and convincing than words. The films
include simplified statistical tables which support his contention that he has not merely
photographed a few isolated instances.
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