Species Autoidentification and Imprinting
In the previous chapter we discussed that the perception of one’s own sex is not always in agreement with the sex of the body. But there is even more “deep” problem — it concerns one’s subjective knowledge about what biological species he belongs to.
No doubt most my readers consider this knowledge inborn. But it is not true.
Scientific press reports some cases of nursing and upbringing of human children in packs of wolves, monkeys and other animals. These children moved on all fours, ate the same food as the animals that raised them. And when people appear — these children did not recognize them as “kinsmen”, but on contrary behaved with fright or enmity.
In special experiments I brought up male dogs so that they had never seen other dogs up to the age of approximately 2 years: I weaned them off their mothers before their eyes opened and nursed artificially; they grew in isolated cages and had contacts with people only.
Their attitude to people was fine. But when I made them meet other dogs for the first time (even friendly to them) they got so frightened of these “monsters” that fall down on the back and stay “paralyzed” in cataleptic poses. They could remain in such stupor for an hour or more and only my caressing interference returned them gradually to the normal state.
Their attitude to other dogs changed radically when they suddenly realized that she-dogs at the time of heat emit the odor of sex pheromones… (I.e., the sexual factor created conditions for accelerated process of socialization).
It turns out that my nurslings did not perceive themselves as dogs.
They perceived themselves as people.
As it was with those human children, who were raised by wolves or monkeys — they perceived themselves as wolves or monkeys.
The matter is that the perception of own species is not inborn. It is formed during a certain critical stage of organism’s development through the mechanism called primary socialization (in contrast to the secondary socialization that may go on long and hardly in a later age).
During the critical stage of the primary socialization so-called imprinting of the adult individuals of one’s species (usually they are one’s parents) happens. It is on this basis that the knowledge of belonging of oneself to certain biological species forms.
In the case of humans this stage lasts from 2 to 6-7 months (see [1,9]). At this period and during about 2 years after it child’s psyche is extremely sensitive to disturbances of harmonious relationships with the mother or with the person who substitutes for her. According to many observations over children’s growth and special experiments with monkeys (H.F. Harlow and others; see bibliography in [9]) disturbances of this harmony (even a long absence of the imprinted person or attempts to substitute someone for this person at this period) lead to hardly reversible or non-reversible derangements of the child’s psychical development that have consequences even for the adult age. They may be psychological difficulties in contacts with other people, unsociableness, hyper-aggressiveness and so on.
* * *
The mechanism of imprinting ensures not the primary socialization only.
… What mechanisms of education exist in general? Cut-and-try method. Conditioned reflex. Studying the experience of others through verbal (oral) contacts, books, radio, TV, movie, imitation etc.
But there is also imprinting and it is not well known in Russia yet.
It is very much alike imitation but the mechanism of imprinting works only during the corresponding critical stages of the organism’s development in childhood and its effect is much stronger.
For example, songs of songbirds are not their inborn calls. Males learn singing when they are nestlings sitting in the nest and their father is singing nearby. They imprint the song but will sing themselves only after reaching the sexual maturity. (This concerns males. Females will not sing but will react to the songs of male coevals as to sexually significant calls of the representatives of their biological species).
If the father does not sing near the nest then descendants do not receive the ability to sing and will become socially impaired. Their participation in reproduction will be distorted or not possible at all.
Sometime it happens that males learn the song of a different biological species and try to reproduce it as much as their vocal apparatus allows.
Thus, professor Alexei Sergeevich Malchevskij — a remarkable enthusiast of his work, a wonderful teacher — demonstrated on lectures on ornithology in the university a tape recording of a male canary’s call. The birds hatched and grew up in a cage in old woman’s flat. She was single and had no one to talk with except for her dear birdies. And they had no canary-father. When the young canary male grew up he began to sing in pure Russian language a song in that lady’s voice: “Ah, what birdies, dear birdies! Ah, what birdies, dear birdies!…”
It is the same with human children: they listen-listen adults speaking, especially the mother (or a nurse)… And then try their voice. The adult’s speech gets imprinted and the native language is learned quite easily during the corresponding critical stage. To learn a foreign language for an adult is much harder: one has to use other mechanisms here, including memorizing of words…
… But if we do not speak with baby and it has no possibility to listen the voice of its beloved person, then the baby does not learn to speak properly, and the native language becomes like a foreign language for it…
This is one of the manifestations of the disease that was widely studied in the Western countries in orphanages after World War I: children that are just fed and swaddled but are deprived of individual emotional care and attention — such children grow into asocial people, unable to speak fluently, and quite often aggressive. A special term was invented for designating this syndrome — hospitalism.
However, hospitalism is not necessarily the destiny of all children brought up without their mothers. It does not matter whether own or adoptive mother brings up the children. It is only important whether she is a woman with a full set of motherly emotional features. Plus certain scientific knowledge. For example, the experience of truly communistic way of life realized after World War II not in the USSR “building communism”, but in Israeli communes (kibbutzes), demonstrated that common fostering of children without participation of mothers can give remarkable results provided that the process of upbringing is right organized (see bibliography in [9]).
* * *
Knowledge of these laws of the development and upbringing of children inheres in pedagogy of all developed countries of the Earth. But it was not known in the USSR and the child orphan institutions “stamped” masses of mentally defective people. In the USSR this subject was kept from public.
… At that time in the USSR there was no even psychology, just “Pavlov’s” physiology of higher nervous activity, which operates only with the concept of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes. According to this mechanistic (materialistic!) doctrine behavior and thinking are just reflexes to signals from the outer and inner (bodily anatomico-physiological) surroundings. And all living beings including humans — are not units of consciousness evolving in the process of Absolute’s Evolution, but some strange living organic mechanisms: they live some time for some reason, produce descendants for the sake of continuing the existence of their species, left them (at best) some wealth — and died…
To incorporate into this stupid scheme any new ideas one has to fight under political risk (“an attempt of undermining the basis of materialistic outlook!”).
… I was the first one in the USSR who started to speak seriously about these problems in the scientific press (before it there was only one mentioning made by another author). My publications caused a great positive response from scientists and doctors.
But now… again I hear with pain on radio that children in Russian orphanages still do not learn to speak…
* * *
The models of social behavior peculiar to the sex also form through the mechanism of imprinting. This kind of imprinting is called identification. Special critical stages of this process were discovered (see bibliography in [19]). The results of research showed that a child needs healthy contacts with adults of the same sex. (At that, boys — with the father — since the age of 3 years and girls — with the mother — both before this age and after). These people must be the persons whom the child loves and respects, though they do not necessarily have to be one’s mother and father.
Parents must know: your child unconsciously imprints your patterns of behavior, both good and bad ones. He does not repeat them immediately but will do it when grow up. Your child will use your turns of speech, emotional reactions, nutrition habits, will (or will not) smoke, drink hard, will adopt your professional skills, ways of spending spare time, your attitude to nature, people… And only at the age of approximately 20 years he may start to analyze these patterns critically…
* * *
Here is an interesting example of food imprinting.
Once my puppy got ill and I decided to try to use garlic among other remedies: I gave him some garlic, but he did not want to eat it: distasteful! And spat it out.
Then I started to chew garlic cloves myself — specially for him to see. I demonstrated that like it very much, what bliss it gives me… He was looking at me, examining, tasting, spitting it out… But then started to eat it himself. Just imitating!
… About 2 years later when he became a grown-up dog I recalled that occasion and decided to find out how he likes garlic now.
To my surprise he was delighted with garlic: chewed it with pleasure, asked for more.
For sure, he was the only dog in the whole Earth’s history that reeked of garlic that much!
* * *
If we wish to help our children to become better — we should not only tell them about it but also show them patterns of our own right behavior.
Love in the aspects of tenderness, care, respect, compassion to all living creatures, readiness to help everyone with everything good, aspiration to knowledge, diligence are the virtues that adults must adhere to and demonstrate them to children.
… Sometimes it may be too late — the child grows as an egoistic, wicked person…
In this case one cannot manage without “extinction of vicious reflexes by methods of negative confirmation” (in terms of the physiology of higher nervous activity).
… In researches on dogs I found out that, first, egoism and aggressiveness appear not in all individuals under equal other conditions (i.e. the main determining factor here is the features of souls incarnated into given bodies), and second, the mentioned negative features can be destroyed by “pedagogical measures”, i.e. suppressed through “adequate measures of punishment”. Namely, when there was a strong non-aggressive dog in a group who could suppress by force aggressive “tricks” of other dogs with such vices — the vices of the latter were decreasing gradually and vanishing eventually [11].
