Concept
Hospitalism
The physical and psychological deterioration of infants kept for long periods in institutions where they are fed and physically cared for but have no stable, affectionate relation with a mother or a substitute. Paediatricians used the word from the late nineteenth century for the harm done by long stays in hospitals and foundling homes, which they generally put down to infection and poor hygiene. In 1945 René Spitz recast it as a psychiatric syndrome caused by total emotional deprivation in the first year of life: a steep fall in developmental level, withdrawal, retarded growth, susceptibility to illness and high mortality, damage he considered largely irreversible. He set it against anaclitic depression, the partial and reversible form. His studies, and the methodological objections raised against them, fed the post-war debate on maternal deprivation.
- Broader concept
- Maternal deprivation
- Key works
- 3
- Related
- Maternal deprivation
reworked by
- René Spitz 1945 The term was a paediatric one from the end of the nineteenth century; in his 1945 paper Spitz reformulated its causes, tracing the deterioration of institutionalised infants to the absence of a mother rather than to infection.
critiqued by
- Samuel R. Pinneau 1955 Pinneau's 1955 review challenged the evidence Spitz offered for hospitalism.
gave rise to
- Maternal deprivation Spitz and Wolf's interpretation of hospitalism fed into Bowlby's post-war theory of maternal deprivation, and the notion of hospitalism was later widened to severe and lasting maternal deprivation in general.