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This article provide short notes on Social Deprivation and Emotional Growth in Child.
Many experiments have been conducted to study how social deprivation has its adverse effect on emotional growth. Monkeys were subjected to two kinds of social deprivation, partial and total. In the first kind, they were deprived of the close company of other monkeys but were kept where the other monkeys were in view.
In the second kind, they were kept in such an isolated place, where none of their species could be seen; not even any animal was in view. A period of such a total deprivation, when prolonged as long as three months, left the monkeys with a sort of emotional shock. This proves that a social life knit with affectional fibres, is must for a proper emotional growth.
In the experiment with monkeys, mentioned above, the monkeys were found to be self-clutching and crawling. When after a three-month-long total social-deprivation, they were allowed contacts with other monkeys, nearly of their own age, for a period of 30 minutes on each day they very rapidly established effective social relationships with their peers.
Gregariousness is an instinct among the fourteen ones enumerated by McDougal. Though, the theory of instincts may not be enjoying acceptance among the modern psychologists, nevertheless, it tells that in almost all living beings, with individual differences, (though a few species are the exception) there is a strong feeling for living in a group of their own species.
The feeling being so strong, as illustrated above in case of monkeys, it should be taken to be an emotion for social living in case of human beings, among whom the feeling happens to be the strongest.
A child develops because of his reactions to the stimuli that his surroundings, both social and physical, provide to him. So, when a child is isolated, or is not living in a wholesome social environment, which is stimulating enough to make the child react fully and in a proper way (Fig. 11.3), he would not be developing emotionally, too, as his cognitive and motor development would suffer.
Using the terms as used by the psychoanalysts, we may say that till the time, the child is living at the stage of ID, it would not be requiring the company of others of its society, but if it is to cross over to the stage of ego, then for the satisfaction of his ego, he would need the company of others of his society, beginning with his mother and moving towards the widening society consisted of his peers or classmates of the nursery level.
What has been described so far proves Love to be the master emotion. Its forms may be different, in different situations, and in relation to different persons. A child’s love for his mother or father, is filial love; that of parents towards the child, is parental love; love among brothers and sisters is fraternal love; and love for one’s own self, is self-love.
Though a female child’s liking for her father, and, of a male child, for his mother, has been described by Freud, because of Electra complex and Oedipus complex respectively; and an overwhelming fondness for one’s own beauty, is narcissism. The source of energy for competition is self-love, or, motive for social status, a demand of one’s ego; or it may be Esprit de corps, which shows one’s strong love for one’s group.