Anaclitic Depression: An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood, II

The second part of René Spitz's inquiry into psychiatric conditions in early childhood, written with Katherine M. Wolf and published in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child in 1946, following his paper on hospitalism. Observing infants in the nursery of a penal institution, the authors describe a syndrome that appeared in children who had enjoyed good relations with their mothers for at least the first six months of life and were then separated from them. Weepiness and clinging gave way to withdrawal, loss of weight, insomnia, greater susceptibility to illness and a fall in the developmental quotient. They name the syndrome anaclitic depression, after the infant's dependence on the mother as its first object, and compare it with depression in adults. The condition lifted when the mother returned within a few months, while longer separations threatened lasting harm. The paper sets the syndrome beside hospitalism: anaclitic depression follows a partial and reversible loss of the mother, hospitalism a total deprivation of her.