literature

Attachment Theory

Deviation Actions

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Literature Text

"Harlow used .... an isolation chamber he called the "pit of despair" (in which) baby monkeys were left alone in darkness for up to one year from birth, or repetitively separated from their peers and isolated in the chamber. These procedures quickly produced monkeys that were severely psychologically disturbed and declared to be valuable models of human depression."


His face crumpled like a furry walnut, the infant Rhesus mews for his rubber teat. For mental stimulation, we offer the subject wooden blocks in various geometric shapes. His reactions are notable: at first he favours the circle, but in time shows a preference for triangles and squares. His first attempt at building stuns the scientific world; he reconstructs the Vatican. Thus we learn: deprivation fosters genius.

Soon, however, he exhibits more aggressive tendencies and symptoms of deep depression. He unravels the frame of his surrogate and uses the wire to build a crude stringed instrument, electrically powered by the nodes built into the floor of his cage for future studies in touch aversion. He starts to sulk, masturbates frequently and bites the lab technicians, forcing us to muzzle him. This leads to endless renditions of 'Fade To Black' played day and night on that damned guitar, which gives us all a terrible headache.

Appearing to slip back into passivity a few weeks later, he uses the components of his instrument to make a circuit-board. We are overjoyed, but then he blackmails the janitor into providing him with a seventeen-inch LCD screen. We only discover the purpose of this act when CNN announce a startling rise in banana shares, the lab is inundated with outraged calls from PETA and all our bank accounts are hacked.

We throw our hands up in despair.
Silly 2.

I remember seeing those poor baby monkeys in a book in science class. Right before I released all of the lab mice into the 'wild'.
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berlinBuenosAyres's avatar
i love the last line, for some reason makes me imagine this doctors as if old greeks, you know, hands and looks to the sky praying for any of them gods.
you should write more prose