The Self Illusion

by Bruce Hood

  Babes in the Woods

  In 1798, a naked boy, aged somewhere around ten years, wandered out of the forest in the province of Aveyron in France.51 The villagers had periodically spotted him but no one knew who he was. More likely or not, he was one of the many abandoned children left to die in the woods during these hard times when infanticide was commonplace during the French Revolution. But somehow ‘Victor’, as he was later called, managed to survive. When the local villagers eventually caught him, news of Victor reached Paris where his plight became a cause célèbre. In the spirit of the Revolution, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau had argued that man was born inherently good but that society corrupted the noble savage within all of us. Victor was the first test case of this argument and so the Parisian intelligentsia was eager to meet him. As a child uncorrupted by society, Victor could be the living embodiment of Rousseau’s noble savage.

  However, Victor was far from noble. He was violent, made animal noises and defecated indiscriminately. At first, it was thought that he might be deaf and mute, so he initially spent time in the National Institute for the Deaf and Dumb, but it soon became apparent that Victor’s problem was more than simply not being able to communicate. A young Parisian doctor, Jean Itard, who had been treating children at the Institute, described Victor in his memoirs as:

  a disgusting, slovenly boy, affected with spasmodic, and frequently with convulsive motions, continually balancing himself like some of the animals in the menagerie, biting and scratching those who contradicted him, expressing no kind of affection for those who attended upon him; and, in short, indifferent to every body, and paying no regard to any thing.52

  Itard believed that with patient training, Victor could be integrated back into society. At first, progress looked promising as Victor started to understand spoken commands. He even managed to wear clothes. However, his ability to communicate did not develop further and after five years of intensive training, Itard abandoned his attempt to reintegrate Victor into society. Victor remained in the care of Itard’s housekeeper until his death in 1828.

  Wild or feral children like Victor have periodically cropped up to stimulate public interest. What would a child without any parenting or experience of other humans be like? Would they ever acquire a language? It is reported that, in 1493, James IV of Scotland ordered two infants to the island of Inchkeith in the Firth of Forth to be raised by a mute woman because he wanted to know what language the children would end up speaking if they never heard another human talk. According to the diarist, Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, who reported the incident some years later, ‘Sum sayis they spak goode Hebrew.’53

  Clearly feral children have been sparking the imagination of intellectuals interested in nature and nurture for centuries. It makes good fiction – remember the young boy Mowgli raised by wolves in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book or Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes. We are interested because we want to know the natural dispositions of humans and what they learn from the environment. What is their self like in the absence of parental influence?

  One problem in answering this question is that many of these cases come from poor, isolated, rural communities and so it is difficult to get sufficient background information and details. In one of the better-documented cases from the 1970s, psychologists studied ‘Genie’, a fourteen-year-old girl who had been kept in social isolation from infancy in the backroom of her psychotic grandfather’s condo in Los Angeles. Like Victor, she had limited communication and understanding, despite the concerted attempts of speech therapists and child psychologists to rehabilitate her.

  The case of Genie has been used as evidence to support the critical period of social development, but without knowing the initial state of these children, it is still difficult to draw firm conclusions.54 Maybe they were abandoned because they were already brain-damaged. In reviewing the case of Victor, child development expert Uta Frith observed that he displayed many of the characteristics of severe autism.55 We also do not know whether and to what extent early malnourishment of feral children contributes to potential brain damage. Maybe it was not the lack of social interaction so much as the damaging consequences of not being cared for by others who provide the necessary nutrition to develop normally. However, the fall of a Romanian dictator in 1989 would reveal that both physical and psychological nurturing is essential for long-term social development.

  What’s Love Got to Do With It?

  The tiny faces peering out between the bars of the cribs shocked the Western world back in 1990 as the full atrocity of the Romanian orphanages came to light. Romania Marxist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu had outlawed birth control and ordered women to bear more children in an attempt to increase the country’s population. In an already poor economy, many of these children were simply dumped in institutions because their parents could not cope. Children in these orphanages were not only malnourished; they were also socially abandoned with no interaction with the so-called caregivers. On average there was only one caregiver for every thirty babies. The babies lay in their own faeces, fed from bottles strapped to their cots and were hosed down with cold water when the smell became unbearable. Some babies had been left lying on their backs for so long that their heads had flattened abnormally. Harvard psychologist Chuck Nelson, who headed up the US team that studied the Romanian orphanages, described the conditions as ‘breathtakingly awful’.56 Colleagues that arrived to evaluate these children were instructed not to cry in front of them. Nelson said. ‘One of the eeriest things about these institutions is how quiet they are. Nobody’s crying.’ Their normal social bonds had been broken.

  When the plight of the orphans came to light, the world descended on Romania to rescue these children. Families determined to give them a better start in life brought around 300 orphans to the United Kingdom. In the United States, Nelson and his colleagues studied 136 of them.57 How would they fare? British psychiatrist Sir Michael Rutter led a team that would study 111 of these children who were less than two years of age when they first came to the UK.58 There were no medical records for these orphans and there is always the problem of knowing if an individual child suffered from congenital disorders, but the research revealed some amazingly consistent findings.

  When they arrived, the orphans were mentally retarded and physically stunted with significantly smaller heads than normal children. However, by four years of age, most of this impairment had gone. Their IQs were below the average for other four-year-olds, but within the normal range that could be expected. These children seemed to be largely rehabilitated. Some had done much better than others. Orphans who were younger than six months of age when they arrived were indistinguishable from other normal British children of the same age. They made a full recovery. Their window of opportunity had not yet closed when they arrived in the UK. The longer they had been in the orphanage after six months of age, the more impaired their recovery was despite the best efforts of their adopted families.

  The orphans were followed up again at six, eleven and fifteen years of age. Again as a group they fared much better than expected, given their poor start, but not all was well. Those who had spent the longest time in the orphanage were beginning to show disturbed behaviour with problems forming relationships and hyperactivity. Just as Bowlby and others had predicted, the absence of a normal social attachment during infancy had left a legacy of poor social attachment as an adult. Rutter concluded that infants younger than six months recovered fully from social deprivation, but older infants were increasingly at risk of later problems in life. While malnutrition played some role in their impaired development, it could not be the only reason. When they looked at the weight of babies when they entered the UK, this did not predict their development. Rather it was the amount of time that they had been socially isolated that played a greater role. Their ability to fit in socially had been irrevocably ruined by their isolation as infants.

  Can you survive without others? Possibly. Some people have survived years in isolat
ion. But would you want to? And what about the need for others when we are children? The Romanian orphanage studies reveal that there is something deeply fundamental about our need for interaction with others that makes social psychological development essential for our well-being. Those orphans lucky enough to be rescued in time prove that with nurturing homes and care, we can recover from the misery of isolation. However, what is shocking is how quickly isolation can permanently impair our social development. It would appear that within a year of birth, each of us needs others in order to be happy for the rest of our lives. This suggests that the sense of self that emerges over development is one that carries the legacy of early social experiences because the processes that construct the individual during this sensitive period are disrupted. In other words, the developing human brain critically expects input from others and, if this is not available, it has lasting impact on the epigenesis of normal social behaviour.

  Monkey Love

  The Romanian orphans responded similarly to the rhesus monkeys in Harry Harlow’s infamous isolation studies during the 1960s.59 Harlow had been inspired by Bowlby’s theory of why children raised in orphanages develop antisocial behaviour, but he wanted to rule out the alternative explanations that these were children from poorer backgrounds or that poor nutrition in the institutions had led to these effects. To test this, he raised infant rhesus monkeys in total social isolation for varying amounts of time (these studies would never be approved today now that we know how similar monkeys are to humans). Despite feeding them and keeping them warm, those monkeys that spent at least the first six months of life in total isolation developed abnormally. They compulsively rocked back and forth while biting themselves and found it difficult to interact with other monkeys. When they became mothers themselves, they ignored or sometimes attacked their own babies. The social deprivation they had experienced as infants had left them as socially retarded adults. If they were introduced to the rest of the monkeys before the six months was up, then they recovered more social behaviours. Monkeys that were only isolated after the first six months were not affected. Clearly monkeys and humans from birth require something more than sustenance. It isn’t food and warmth they need, it is love – without the love of others, we are lost as individuals, unable to form the social behaviours that are so necessary to becoming a normal social animal.

  What is it about social isolation that is so destructive for the developing primate? There is no simple answer and one can speculate about different mechanisms. For example, babies who are born extremely prematurely can spend several weeks isolated in an incubator to provide a suitable breathing and sterile environment for their immature lungs. Not only are they born too early, but they are also very small and have a low birthweight. However, if you interact with them by stroking them and massaging them while they are still inside the incubator, this minimal contact significantly improves their physical development. They grow and put on weight much faster than premature babies left alone. The most likely explanation comes from animal studies that show that grooming and tactile contact stimulate the release of growth hormones in the brain. These growth hormones affect metabolism and the calorific uptake so that these little guys can absorb more from their food. In the United States, psychologist Tiffany Field60 has shown that simply stroking premature babies for fifteen minutes each day for ten days leads to significantly increased body weight, an earlier discharge from hospital and an estimated saving of around $10,000 for each infant. It may all seem a little too touchy-feely, but massaging babies makes sound financial sense on top of all the health benefits.

  It’s not just weight gain; brains also thrive with social interaction. As noted above, rat pups like a bit of rough-and-tumble play. In the 1940s Donald Hebb,61 looked at the effects of raising baby rats in complete isolation compared to those raised in social cages containing lots of other rats with which to interact. He found that not only were isolated rats significantly slower on problem solving, such as running around a maze, but their brains were not as well developed as the social rats, which had heavier brains and thicker cortical areas. If you remember back to the wiring illustration in Chapter 1 (Figure 5), this thicker cortex was due to increased connectivity between the neurons. So being raised in isolation is not healthy for a social animal.62 We now know that loneliness stunts growth and impairs the health of humans, monkeys, rabbits, pigs, rats, mice and even the humble fruit fly, ‘Drosophila’63 – and the Drosophila does not even have much of a cortex let alone brain!

  In addition to physical growth, for humans, one of the real problems of social isolation is not having access to those who know more about the world. Adults usually look after – and look out for – the child. Even if an infant manages to survive, not having older and wiser individuals around means uncertainty. Without the ability to understand, control, communicate, regulate, navigate or negotiate the world, an individual is helpless. And without others to help, these uncertainties create stress and anxiety, which in the long term are corrosive to our health and mental well-being.

  It’s not just love and attention children need: they also require order and structure. They seek out adults who behave predictably. Paradoxically, they will even form strong attachment to parents who are abusive just so long as they are reliably abusive.64 This is because the abuse creates anxiety in the child that, in turn, increases their need to attach. This becomes a vicious dysfunctional cycle of love and hate that sets the scene for abusive relationships later in adult life.65 Infants need adults that respond reliably to them because they are attentive and predictable. That’s why most babies love ‘peek-a-boo’ – it’s more than just a game – it’s a way for infants to identify adults who are prepared to invest their time and effort.66

  Of course, sustenance and nutrition are vital, but infants require other people in order to discover who they are. Without others, we cannot develop the sense of self that most of us have – an integrated, coherent individual existing independently as a member of a larger social group. Who knows what kind of self, if any, would emerge in a child raised in total isolation? One can only speculate that such an inhuman situation would produce an inhuman self.

  Copy Me

  It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. By the time infants reach their first birthday, they are always looking for opportunities to imitate. Their social brains, percolating with explosions of connectivity, are on the lookout for useful information from others. By watching others, babies are making use of thousands of years of evolution that has equipped them to learn rapidly by observation – which is so much easier and better than trying to figure stuff out for themselves.

  It would appear that most of us like to be imitated or at least we like people who copy our behaviours. Have you ever noticed how people in love do this? The next time you are in a park where couples hang out or maybe a popular restaurant where romantic, candlelit dinners are common, take a look at the actions of people in love. Even though you may not be able to hear the sweet nothings they exchange, you can immediately tell when two people fancy each other by the amount of imitation they share, just by looking at their body postures and non-verbal communication.

  To be able to copy others is one of the most powerful skills with which humans are born.67 From the very beginning, babies are sophisticated people-watchers, following adults around and copying their behaviours. No other animal has the same capacity for copying the way we naturally do. This ability probably existed before we evolved language, as it would have been really useful as a way to pass on knowledge about tools. No other animal makes or uses tools as conspicuously as humans, and despite the isolated reports of nut-cracking or termite-prodding with sticks by chimpanzees, these pale into insignificance compared to what babies spontaneously learn from watching others.

  This is because humans have been programmed to imitate. If an infant watches an adult perform some new action on a never before seen object, a one-year-old will remember and copy the behaviour one week
later.68 The child knows what the goal of the action is even when the adult is thwarted by some problem. In one study,69 a female adult looked and smiled at fourteen-month-old infants and then leaned forward to activate a light-switch on a box by bending over and touching it with her forehead. When presented with the light-switch box, the babies produced the same bizarre movement. However, if the woman had her arms wrapped in a blanket and did exactly the same movement with her forehead, the babies did not copy the head movement, but activated the light-switch on the box with their hands. The babies must have reasoned that, because the woman’s hands were restricted, her goal was simply to press the switch. When her hands were not bound, however, babies must have reasoned that using your head was important for activating the light-switch.

  Many animals can copy but none do so for the pure joy of being sociable. Copying is not an automatic reflex. Babies do not slavishly duplicate every adult action they see.70 If the adult does not smile and get the babies’ attention from the start, then babies don’t copy. Also, babies only copy adults who seem to know what they are doing. Initially babies will copy the actions of an adult who is wearing a blindfold. The baby does not know that the adult cannot see. However, if you give the baby the blindfold to play with, then they don’t make the mistake of copying the blindfolded adult again. Babies know that they can’t possibly be looking at anything worth paying attention to. In other words, babies will only copy adults when they are led to think that something is worth doing. Babies will even copy robots that seem to behave socially. My colleague Shoji Itakura in Kyoto has shown that if a robot initially looks at an infant, then the infant will copy the robot’s actions. If the robot does not react socially to the child, it is ignored. By simply looking at the baby, the robot is assumed to have a purposeful mind worthy of attention.71