The Mt Kenya Times 
By: Wanjohi. P. Mugambi
Worth Noting:
- An example of suggested outcome is failure to thrive: a delay in normal growth and development. L.I. Gardner used the word deprivation to describe a case of a male twin who was rejected emotionally by his mother while his sister was cared for normally. At 13 months the female twin was of almost normal height while the boy was the size of a seven-month-old.
- As was mentioned above, there is a relationship between perceptions and the functioning of the nervous system and it is assumed in cases such as this twin that a depressed state leads to the inhibition of secretions of the pituitary hormones, including the growth hormones.
Emotional deprivation is one of those vague phrases than can be used glibly, providing an oversimplified explanation for a complex situation. In fact, total deprivation of emotions is impossible: what is usually meant is a severe imbalance in emotional experience, leading to a lack of affection. In turn this gives rise to few opportunities for joy, healthy curiosity or happiness.
There are several causes for a deprivation of affection. A child may be in the kind of institution where little personal attention is given. A parent may reject the child for any number of reasons. Later in life the child may reject parents, perhaps because upward mobility has led to a shift in social class for the child. The effects of deprivation of affection are much harder to describe. It is easy to fall into the trap of concluding that there is a simple equation: deprivation of affection outcome. Actually, the outcome is likely to be determined by many factors, with deprivation of affection being only one
An example of suggested outcome is failure to thrive: a delay in normal growth and development. L.I. Gardner used the word deprivation to describe a case of a male twin who was rejected emotionally by his mother while his sister was cared for normally. At 13 months the female twin was of almost normal height while the boy was the size of a seven-month-old.
As was mentioned above, there is a relationship between perceptions and the functioning of the nervous system and it is assumed in cases such as this twin that a depressed state leads to the inhibition of secretions f the pituitary hormones, including the growth hormones. It is deceptively easy to stop at this point. In fact of course there is always the possibility that children deprived of affection are also deprived of food or at least of food of the more nourishing kind.
Deprivation of affection can also lead to loss of appetite and apathy so there may be a two-way process involved. Other reported outcomes of deprivation include slow motor development, delayed speech, poor concentration, hostility to others and selfishness. The same warning about the dangers of oversimplification should be kept in mind.
The long-term effects of deprivation of affection are now seen as less serious and less clear-cut than was the case a few years ago. Formerly, it was believed that such experiences automatically resulted in an adult with an ‘affectionless’ personality. Now it is recognised that later good experiences can go some way to offsetting the bad; the deprivation of early years is a contributory but not a sole factor.
Too much affection can be as potentially damaging as too little. Parents who are oversolicitous teach their children to be the centre of the universe, as anyone who has had anything to do with a classically spoilt child realises very quickly. These children are summed up in the demand ‘I want, I want, I want and I want it now’.
Unless their perspective shifts, and it often does when they go to school, such children demonstrate little interest in others and find themselves isolated from their peers and disliked by adults. Each emotions has their origin which is concerned with the functioning Of the brain and the autonomic nervous system, as outlined above.
Since such theories are not strictly speaking developmental, except insofar as the nervous system develops, they should not concern us here, but for the sake of completeness one example of experimental work can be given. In the 1 930s there was much interest in the hippocampus as an important area in mediating emotional behaviour. Two workers ablated the temporal lobes, including the hippocampus and amygdala, in monkeys, rendering the animals ’emotionally unreactive, docile and fearless’.
1) Learning theory is properly a developmental approach and there are some readily believable examples of learning certain emotional responses. Many children learn to be afraid of dogs, for example. Learning can be by imitation; a parent who is afraid of mice is likely to find children following the example. And children learn the socially acceptable ways of behaving when they feel emotions: in most cultures boys are taught not to cry. While learning theory is attractive in this context, it does not explain all aspects that have been discussed in this chapter; notably it does not explain totally the age changes in the types of fears that are experienced throughout childhood.
2) Cognitive theories focus on the child’s understanding of what is happening, and again are useful in explaining some of the phenomena. For example, the fear of strangers is summed up as ‘an unassimilated discrepant event producing uncertainty’. In everyday language we might say ‘we are not sure what to make of this person and so we are at a loss as to what to do.’
3) Attachment theory has obvious relevance for some emotional behaviour, especially that related to loss and abandonment. But it, too, fails to explain all aspects of emotions. It has little to say on sex differences and again more is needed if one is to understand all changes with age. Perhaps the search for a single explanatory theory of emotional behaviour is, given our present Knowledge, futile. An understanding of many different approaches can result in an almost complete picture, analogous to a jigsaw. If we are at a jigsaw stage in explaining emotions we are not admitting defeat in our search.
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