Customer Reviews

Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection

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"Love At Goon Park" is a fascinating look at a man and his work. Deborah Blum provides the reader with an extensive and sobering background before exploring Harry Harlow's research. Did you know that as recently as the 1950s, psychologists were trying to convince parents that too much cuddling and "love" were bad for their children? Harlow, with his revolutionary experiments on baby monkeys, was bucking the conventional wisdom of his time. He was trying to say that mother's love mattered, that touch mattered, that affection mattered. His peers didn't want to hear this, but Harlow's research finally forced the profession to listen.

Blum's writing is never dry, never boring. She writes with amazing flair and humanity. You'll feel that you are getting to know this person, Harry Harlow. Even more, you'll feel you are there in the lab with Harlow and his graduate students, waiting to see how the baby monkeys will react to the latest experiment. What will we learn? Will anyone listen? Blum cares, and you'll care too.

You can't help but feel for the monkeys when you read this book. And Blum doesn't gloss over the issue of abuse, especially mental, that was visited on our primate cousins in the name of science. "Goon Park" takes an unflinching look at Harry Harlow, warts and all. I think her treatment of all the issues was fair and balanced.

I highly recommend "Love At Goon Park." It's well-written, interesting and important.

Harry Harlow was an "envelope pusher" who,increasingly driven to find answers to the most fundamental questions about why we both need and give love, transformed himself into a strident and self-righteous researcher -- admired and hated by his colleagues. This book tells the story in a gripping manner, really putting the reader "inside the mind-set" of a researcher who, driven by his own sense of being unloved, developed a seeming manaic compulsion to dissect and analyze the nature of love. He did it in a way that both enthralled and infuriated others.

The primate research lab at the department of psychology of the University of Madison is the setting for this absorbing book. Here, we also learn of academic subterfuge and conspiracy, and the irony of psychologists behaving in a severely dysfunctional manner. The title refers to the address of the lab, which was 600 N. Park, but often looked like "Goon Park" when scrawled by hand on envelopes and memos. This is great science writing that is balanced, insightful, and manages to capture both the beauty and the ugliness of scientific research without taking a pious stance. Quite a neat trick, but Deborah Blum pulls it off and brings this overlooked episode of psychology research into the forefront of our understanding of how science is really practiced. Very readable, with fascinating insights throughout. Even if you're thinking "Harry WHO?" you will, after completing this book, feel that everyone should know about his life and work.

Whether by design or naiveté, Blum's Love at Goon Park tells the story of Harry Harlow in such a way that readers with only a passing familiarity with Harlow will come away from the book with the impression that in spite of the clearly troubling nature of his experimental manipulations of baby monkeys, science and humanity - especially young human children - were well served. And readers will have the impression that such things are not allowed in today's laboratories: we have progressed ethically since the days of Harlow.

Blum accomplishes these goals in various ways. One the one hand she blindly (or carefully) omits some key points about Harlow's earliest work with monkeys. She gets it right when explaining that Harlow was surprised that monkeys are highly intelligent problem solvers who are adept at applying past knowledge to novel situations. Harlow felt and wrote that monkeys and humans have the same sort of minds. Blum does not mention the fact that Harlow, upon leaning of these seemingly profound implications, began damaging monkeys' brains and then testing their previous problem solving abilities. (See for instance, his 1950 publication in Science: "The effect of large cortical lesions on learned behavior in monkeys.") Blum also fails to mention the radiation studies Harlow conducted on monkeys. (See for instance, his 1956 publication in the Journal of Comparative Physiology and Psychology: "The effects of repeated doses of total-body x radiation on motivation and learning in rhesus monkeys.") Thus, readers do not understand Harlow's willingness to hurt animals prior to beginning his studies on attachment.

Blum also makes the historically erroneous claim that prior to Harlow's work on attachment no one was paying attention to the work of psychologists studying the effect of social and environmental deprivation in human children. She pointedly claims that Harlow began his work on "... mother love at a time when British psychiatrist John Bowlby could barely persuade his colleagues to join the words `mother' and `love' together." (p 150)

But Bowlby was commissioned by the World Health Organization to study the effects of institutionalization on orphaned children. He published his landmark work, Maternal Care and Mental Health, in 1951. Harlow published "Love in Infant Monkeys" in Scientific American in 1959. Bowlby was neither a pioneer in these studies of human children nor a lone voice. In this area of psychology, Harlow did nothing for human children; his work did, ironically, add to the wealth of evidence that monkeys and humans are disquietingly similar in ethically important ways.

Blum also reshapes history by casting doubt on the veracity and honor of Harlow's critics. For instance, she claims that "until late in Harry's career, animal activists were remarkably respectful of research priorities." (p. 298) Harlow retired in 1974. Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, cited by nearly all historians as the catalyst for the modern animal rights movement, was first published in 1975.

Love at Goon Park is a stark example of propaganda. Though the reasons for Blum's love of primate vivisectors remain obscure, the love and admiration shine forth. Two comments encapsulate all of Blum's studious disingenuousness: "Bill Mason and Sally Mendoza, at the University of California, have done remarkable work with the South American titi monkey." (p 278) And, quoting Bill Mason: "[Harlow] would write about his experiments as if he did them with glee....It made my flesh creep." (p 297)

Here is an example of Mendoza's "remarkable work" with titi's in her own words: "The propensity to seek contact with individuals with which a strong relationship ... is exemplified in the extreme by the South American titi monkey. These monogamous primates spend up to 90% of their day in physical contact with other members of their family group.... We will selectively lesion, using aspiration techniques, different cortical fields in animals from well-established social groups. We will then monitor changes in social behavior and social motivation associated with the loss of a specific field or body part representation therein." (From one of her current publicly-funded NIH grants, "Somatosensory cortex in affective social relationships.")

And William "Bill" Mason's supposed sensitivities to his teacher's research? This seems a bit misleading. His most recently published paper (2004) is titled: "Behavioral and physiological adaptation to repeated chair restraint in rhesus macaques."

Readers beware: Blum's account of Harlow, in Love at Goon Park, is perfectly aligned with her account of the entire industry, Monkey Wars. She is a staunch supporter of the industry and skillfully leads her readers to conclusions not supported by a fair reading of the facts. She presents a selective history and a carefully tailored recitation of the "facts" that seem calculated to put a positive spin on the most ethically challenging human use of animals.

In spite of this, and in part because of it, I recommend Monkey Wars and Love at Goon Park to readers. These books have much interesting information and give much insight into the willingness of the industry to put up with, to defend, and to encourage, essentially any and all forms of cruelty.

This book is a study of love and affection and turns some traditional scientific research on it's ear. Perhaps more ironic is the fact that while Harry was studying love and parenting at the lab, his own wife and children felt deprived by his absense which led to their divorce. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Extremely well written and interesting book on a subject many might think dry and tedious. The lessons learned about love and affection are eye opening and a must read for ANY and All parents.

A very well written book, telling the story of a man, and of the revolution he caused in psychology. There is a lot of irony in this story. If Harry Harlow's experiments strike us as intolerably cruel now, that is due in large part because we know the results of those experiments.

There are important lessons here for present and future parents, researchers, and activists. And even if you don't fall into one of those categories, it's still a fascinating story that is well worth reading.

Like many others, I never forgot the pictures in my intro psych text of Hary Harlow's baby monkies and their surrogate mothers. Blum's very readable book reviews Harlow's work and places it in the historical context of psychology and the social perspectives the middle part of the 1900's.

Although the descriptions of Harlow's experiments were well written, the last chapters of Blum's book were most interesting to me. In these chapters, Blum describes the feminist and animal rights back lash against Harlow's work. One can't help be stunned by the irony that Harlow's work, which ultimently championed the importance of mothers' relationships to their children and the deep intelligence of monkies (and their similarities to human beings), would be vilified by these groups.

Blum's book is, thus, not only about one of the most innovative psychologists of the past century, but also a great perspective of how we change our thinking about what we are as a species. It is far more than a book about the man who took baby monkies away from their mothers.

-Another five-star vote for a useful, interesting view of a person who often finds little credit for their accomplishments -- a smart, abrasive, politically incorrect, vice-ridden, unlovable "jerk," but a jerk who greatly contributes to our understanding.

-Harry Harlow, the "hero" of the book, was a man who tortured monkeys, cast nasty aspersions on women, largely abandoned or neglected his own family, smoked viciously and drank himself silly, and contributed to a persistent stereotype of the morally underdeveloped scientist -- yet he also contributed vastly more to an accurate understanding of Love and Affection than did many saints, poets, and therapists. The author paints a very harrowing picture of Harlow, yet she finds wonder at his persistent efforts to understand this most amazing of all human emotions and drives. For example, Harlow was never satisfied with his initial (and surprisingly controversial) descriptions of the importance of a nurturing environment in child development, and he persevered to show that Love and Acceptance are a product of both genetics and our early childhood experiences ("we give children their roots but their associates give them their wings").

- The author writes a commendably interesting and multi-dimensional work. I was amazed at the story of this scientist who was as tortured, complex, sensitive, and misunderstood as any artist. This book actually helped me learn something useful, so it was not just an intellectual exercise. It's an overlooked and sparkling gem, just like Harry Harlow (although the book is less rough around the edges and probably vastly more fun to interact with).

Love at Goon Park is about Harry Harlow, a scientist who uses monkeys to prove that feeling loved is very, very important to children from the minute they are born and to us all. I was curious about such a scientific project but was totally surprised at how much I enjoyed the book. It's a very good read on every page. The author explains it all clearly and simply, letting her own feeling for both the animals and the people come through. My own children are adults now, but mothers have the hardest job on earth, and we need constant reassurance that we provide a good environment for our family. Reading Love at Goon Park gave me reassurance, and I highly recommend it. You don't have to have a background in science to benefit from its words.

This is one of the most interesting and well written books I've ever read on this or any similar topic. To anyone who studies or has studied attachment, Blum offers an amazing look at how this early research changed the face of psychology. To anyone who has read countless poorly written descriptions of boring research studies, this book is an oasis.

I don't believe Blum has portrayed Harlow through rose-colored glasses. On the contrary, anyone reading this book might even wonder whether Harlow's neglect of his own children was a good thing, given his lack of compassion and indifference toward the suffering he caused. My copy is well-worn and has been loaned out many times. I highly recommend this book.