Article
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.
Main ideas
- Infants separated from their mothers in the second half of the first year, after a good early relationship, can develop a recognisable depressive syndrome.
- The syndrome runs from weepiness and clinging to withdrawal, weight loss, insomnia, susceptibility to illness and a falling developmental quotient.
- Spitz and Wolf call it anaclitic depression, after the infant's leaning on the mother as its first object, and compare it with adult depression.
- The condition is reversible if the mother returns within a few months; longer separation risks lasting damage.
- Anaclitic depression, a partial deprivation of the mother, is set against hospitalism, a total one.
What it shows
René Spitz collaborated with Katherine Wolf
Wolf worked with Spitz on his infant studies of the 1940s, helping with the observations and the statistical treatment of the data, and co-wrote the papers on anaclitic depression and the smiling response.
- 1946
René Spitz introduced Anaclitic depression
Spitz coined the term in the 1946 paper he wrote with Katherine Wolf.
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.