Concept
Anaclitic depression
A depressive syndrome that René Spitz and Katherine Wolf described in 1946 in infants separated from their mothers in the second half of the first year, after at least six months of good relations with them. Weeping and clinging give way to withdrawal, loss of weight, insomnia, susceptibility to illness and a fall in developmental level. Spitz counted it a partial emotional deprivation and, unlike hospitalism, reversible if the mother came back within a few months. The name draws on Freud's notion of anaclisis (Anlehnung): the infant has lost the object on which its development leans. Spitz's data were sharply criticised on methodological grounds, and the concept has since been widely questioned.
- Broader concept
- Maternal deprivation
- Introduced by
- René Spitz
- Key works
- 2
- Related
- Leaning-on
introduced by
- René Spitz 1946 Spitz coined the term in the 1946 paper he wrote with Katherine Wolf.
critiqued by
- Samuel R. Pinneau 1955 Pinneau's 1955 review challenged the evidence Spitz offered for anaclitic depression.
derives from
- Leaning-on Spitz took the word 'anaclitic' from Freud's notion of Anlehnung, the leaning of the drives on the functions of self-preservation, rendered as anaclisis in the Standard Edition.