1.1 – Harry Harlow

The Nature of Love

Harry Harlow at first seems an amiable fellow, he sought to find out the true nature of love. With the theory that no love is greater than that of a mother for it’s baby he pursued some truly atrocious experiments on monkeys over the course of his career. Was he mad or just misunderstood?

The Rape Rack and other tales

Harry Harlow was an American psychologist who wanted to know the true nature of love. What was love could it be defined scientifically? Was it quantifiable? Harry had to know and in his quest for knowledge he became well known for not sugar coating his methods when dealing with the public. He named a forced mating rack, used to make sure the monkeys get down to business, “The Rape Rack” and was not shy about it.

If the Rape rack doesn’t send chills down your 21st century animal rights loving spine then picture the Iron Maiden. Lets be clear here this is what Harlow himself named the devices and calling it Iron Maiden was no accident. The term “Iron Maiden” comes from medieval times. It was a torture device used on traitors in Germany. Picture a metal box large enough for a man, with spikes lining the interior. If it looks like a cute magicians trick you are getting there. This chamber would be sealed with the poor bastard inside and a crank would be turned tightening the spikes into the mans body slowy and then the man would be left to die in agony.

So in calling his Monkey’s mechanical surrogate mothers “Iron Maidens” Harlow was illustrating their purpose to a degree. Harlow’s Iron Maidens were very special surrogates fashioned from metal and cloth they would shoot out sharp spikes and blast babies with air so cold and forceful the infant monkeys were thrown back against the bars of their cages, clinging and screaming.

Harlow made many variations of the Iron Maidens, some would stab the children some would shake them but no matter the torture the babies would cling to their mothers and refuse to let go.

Harlow crafted “Iron Maidens” to mother his baby monkeys.

Pit of Despair

Not satisfied with proving that an infant’s love for its mother was unconditional, Harlow created his masterpiece. The pit of despair. The pit was essentially an isolation chamber in which Harlow would hang infants upside down in complete darkness and silence unable to move for up to two years being fed from the bottom of the cage.

These monkeys had never experienced the outside world, motherly love or anything that resembles a relationship and when they were taken out of the chamber after 12-24 months they were scarred mentally by the experience. The monkeys were psychologically destroyed and psychotic they would come out and attack anything they saw screaming maniacally. Though Harlow tried he was unable to cure the effects of his torture on the monkeys.

The pit of despair deprived the infants of all contact with the outside world and utterly destroyed them mentally.

For Science!

Harlow’s techniques were, to put it mildly quaint but his research did provide real results. We know because of Harlow that love is not just about food, or comfort. That a creature can love another creature even if he is being abused by it. The monkeys Harlow used in his experiments were  rhesus monkeys who share 94% of their DNA with us so in theory the research is transferable to humans.

Disagree though you might with his methods Harlow provided real insight into the nature of love and mental illness. Was he a mad scientist though? I’ll leave that up to you.