LOVE OR VIOLENCE?

By John Maerz BA LMT

     In these days and times we are inundated with tremendous violence. Some reasons may be T.V., fast paced lives or a host of other excuses which, in reality, only augment the problems not create them. We then must ask why? Where does it come from?

     Turn back your way back machine to the late 50's and early 60's where a gentleman named Harlow performed sensory and emotional deprivation experiments on infant rhesus monkeys taken away from their mothers. The resultant deprived monkeys rocked alone like an autistic child, were social inept, compulsively self-mutilated themselves, were unable to mate and neglected and abused their babies if they were female. Harlow assumed that deprivation was akin to bad mothering. Still curious he did another experiment where the monkeys' mothers were replaced with their age mates. They developed normally.

     In the late 60's a gentleman named Mason devised an experiment involving 3 groups of monkeys receiving different kinds of nurturance: a real mother, a surrogate moveable mother (a moving bleach bottle) and an immoveable surrogate mother (stationary bleach bottle with fur). The first group developed normally, the second was mildly twisted and the third one developed the same pathological patterns that the Harlow monkeys did. What was the link?

     Shortly after a neuro-psychologist named Prescott observed that it was the immobile surrogates that produced the most violent "children." This led him to hypothesize that physical and sensory deprivation was a very heavy contributor. He assumed that cultures that have more affection, touching, carrying and holding would produce less violent adults. He confirmed this by studying 49 different cultures and finding that "theft, child abuse and customs of killing, torturing or mutilating the enemy were uncommon or even absent in the nurturing cultures." When the study was computerized it yielded a 73% accurate rate of predicting adult violent behavior. The probability of this was figured to be 1 chance in 250 that these results were coincidental.

     Reflect on our current society. What kind of nurturing do we do? We usually don't have time to give our children "quality" time. What kind of hugging and touching do we do? We usually substitute candy bars, car keys and various inanimate placations. We are afraid of spanking our children that we may be accused of being abusive parents and having the local branch of the government children’s welfare department (the ultimate bleach bottle covered with fur) abduct our children. We are even afraid of touching each other for fear that it may be mistaken as sexual harassment.

     The flow and exchange of energy is what makes us feel our aliveness. The energy exchange of touch is also a prerequisite to healthy physical and emotional development. It doesn't have to come from a mother or a parental figure. Just touching and hugging each other will do. We are each other's caregivers. Without it we find ourselves wandering through drugs, alcohol and other sensory alterations (like the passing car stereo that makes the building shudder) just to remind ourselves that we are still alive. In the more extreme cases of deprivation we resort to various forms of violence or watching it just to feel alive and to vent our frustration because we feel so intensely blocked. What's the answer? Hug someone. Don't hug to get energy but to express your feelings of love, encouragement and appreciation. To receive is heart warming but to give is divine!