Red Bowlby: Attachment Theory in Socialist Czechoslovakia
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Red Bowlby: Attachment Theory in Socialist Czechoslovakia Frank Henschel ABSTRACT This paper explores how attachment theory was adapted and further developed in socialist Czechoslovakia. It analyses the scientific discussions and the influence of the theory on state care policies, especially in residential childcare. KEYWORDS: developmental psychology; attachment theory; residential childcare; knowledge transfer; Communist Czechoslovakia “The home here assumes virtually all or most of the duties of the family […]. We want the home to provide more than family care to children.”1 In Czechoslovakia, ruled by the Communist Party since February 1948, residential care institutions such as infant and children’s homes, which housed children who could not or were not supposed to grow up in their families, were acentral pillar of care policy.2 Children would also be permanently separated from their parents in hospitals, psychiatric wards and care institutions. Although separation was applied as an exception, and not as arule, the regime was convinced that these institutions could supplement and even replace the family and meet all the children’s needs.3 Physicians and educators also emphasised the efficiency of residential care institutions, as evidenced by the quote from a1951 book on health care cited at the beginning of this paper. However, in 1956 Vladimír Vojtík, head of atraditional psychiatric children’s home in the small South Bohemian town of Opařany, warned about the consequences of permanent institutionalisation for children’s psyche and personality in the country’s 1 Ladislav ŠTEJGERLE, Mimoškolní péče avýchova mládeže vyžadující zvláštní péče [Out-ofSchool Care and Education for the Youth in Need of Special Care], in: František Ludvík (ed.), Mládež vyžadující zvláštní péče [Youth in Need of Special Care], Praha 1953, pp.106–112, here p.109. 2 Frank HENSCHEL, “All Children Are Ours”. Children’s Homes in Socialist Czechoslovakia as Laboratories of Social Engineering, Bohemia 56, 2016, No.1, pp.122–144. 3 IDEM, Engineering Families for Children. Adoption and the State Child Welfare System in Socialist Czechoslovakia, in: Martina Winkler— Frank Henschel— Jan Randák— Gabriela Dudeková Kovácová (edd.), Variations and Transformations of Childhood in the Bohemian Lands and Slovakia, Göttingen 2022, pp.167–199; IDEM, The Embodiment of Deviance. The Biopolitics of the “Difficult Child” in Socialist Czechoslovakia, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 34, 2020, No.4, pp.837–857.
FRanK HEnScHEL 57 most important paediatric journal Československá pediatrie [Czechoslovak Pediatrics]. “Today’s collective institutions for children are undoubtedly up to the mark in terms of hygiene and health care in the physical sense. However, this is not the case with regard to the psychological condition of institutionalised children in the sense of upbringing. There is hospitalism there already today. […] As aresult, these children often lack aclose emotional connection to asingle person— their mother.”4 This warning is remarkable in at least two respects. Firstly, Vojtík does acknowledge the efficiency of institutional care for children in socialist Czechoslovakia. But he disagrees with the assumption that providing hygiene and care is enough for achild’s well-being, and stresses the importance of close emotional relationships with the mother. Secondly, he argues that “modern psychiatry”5 supports his observations, but he does not cite any studies or papers. Yet, there are many striking parallels to AngloAmerican psychoanalysts and developmental psychologists in his argumentation: William Goldfarb, René A.Spitz and John Bowlby had studied the consequences of the separation and permanent institutionalisation of children in the 1930s and 1940s.6 This paper will show that these parallels are neither coincidental nor singular. In 1962, the Prague psychologist Josef Langmeier not only took up Vojtík’s warning, but also expanded on his critique of residential care. In doing so, he referred to Czechoslovak and Western research, by Spitz, Goldfarb and, especially, Bowlby: “Abundant evidence for mental disorders in institutionalised children has been presented since that time, in different countries and for different institutional conditions; in our country, too, there have been anumber of detailed observations in the last decade.”7 Finally, in 1970, the Czechoslovak Ministry of Education justified reform of the children’s home system and adoption and foster care rules by citing research on the necessity to meet children’s emotional and psychosocial needs for attachment and closeness to aprimary caregiver. “These principles are irrefutable, especially in early childhood (see the work of Bowlby, Ainsworth, Erickson, Spitz and, domestically, Langmeier, Koch, Matějček and Damborská).”8 These examples suggest that, firstly, afundamental change in knowledge about children’s development and needs took place in socialist Czechoslovakia between 4 Vladimír VOJTÍK, Kotázce hospitalismu vdětských kolektivních zařízeních [On the Question of Hospitalism in Residential Care Institutions for Children], Československá pediatrie [Czechoslovak Pediatrics] 11, 1956, No.4, pp.309–311, here p.309–310. 5 Ibid., p.309. 6 Dennis THOMPSON— John D.HOGAN— Philip M.CLARK, Developmental Psychology in Historical Perspective, New York, NY 2011, pp.90–91; Gerhardt NISSEN, Kulturgeschichte seelischer Störungen bei Kindern und Jugendlichen, Stuttgart 2005, pp.275–283. 7 Josef LANGMEIER, Otázka psychické deprivace avývoj výchovných názorů unás [The Question of Psychological Deprivation and the Development of Educational Views in Our Country], Československá pediatrie 17, 1962, No.7–8, pp.646–652, here p.646. 8 Josef MUSIL— Marie BUŠKOVÁ, Koncepce dětských domovů (Ideový záměr ministerstva školství ČSR) [The Concept of Children’s Homes (Ideological Plan of the Ministry of Education of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic)], Praha 1970, p.10.
58 HISTORIE — OTÁZKY — PROBLÉMY 1/2023 1950 and 1970, resulting in care policy reforms.9 Secondly, this change was, it seems, stimulated by the transfer and adaptation of developmental psychology knowledge, especially Anglo-American hospitalism and attachment theory. This transfer needs to be both explained and understood, in order to shed new light on the temporal, spatial and discursive dimensions of the psychologization of childhood in the second half of the 20th century.10 Attachment theory is one of the most discussed and influential concepts in develop - mental psychology of the second half of the 20th century.11 Since the early 1950s, British psychoanalyst John Bowlby, “the main architect of the most successful theory about the biological roots of mother love and love for mother,”12 had argued, based on previous research into phenomena such as maternal deprivation and hospi talism, that there needs to be aclose and uninterrupted emotional relationship between mothers and their children, especially in the early years of life, and had thus formed acontroversial approach.13 His attachment theory has “become amajor paradigm of child development and has influenced educational counselling and family therapy, custody and adoption decisions, such as mother-infant attachment programmes.”14 Anumber of studies have explored the emergence of attachment theory and emphasised its importance for child-centred parenting, which was considered “democratic”, in Western Europe and the US in the post-war period.15 However, little is known about the extent and contexts of the reception and adaptation of this theory 9 For more details on the reform see: Frank HENSCHEL, Projektování sociálního rodičovství. Osvojení, pěstounská péče aSOS dětské vesničky vsocialistickém Československu [Designing aSocial Parenthood System. Adoption, Foster Care, and SOS Children’s Villages in Socialist Czechoslovakia], Soudobé dějiny [Czech Journal of Contemporary History] 24, 2017, No.4, pp.582–610. 10 André Turmel, among others, has described this fundamental paradigm shift in the US and Western Europe in his AHistorical Sociology of Childhood. Developmental Thinking, Categorization and Graphic Visualization, Cambridge [and elsewhere] 2008. 11 Marga VICEDO, The Nature and Nurture of Love. From Imprinting to Attachment in Cold War America, Chicago— London 2014, pp.2–11. 12 EADEM, Cold War Emotions. Mother Love and the War over Human Nature, in: Mark Solovey (ed.), Cold War Social Science. Knowledge Production, Liberal Democracy, and Human Nature, Basingstoke 2012, pp.233–250, here p.241. 13 Claudia MOISEL, Geschichte und Psychoanalyse. Zur Genese der Bindungstheorie von John Bowlby, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 65, 2017, No.1, pp.51–74; Erica BURMAN, Deconstructing Developmental Psychology, London [and elsewhere] 2008, pp.130–133; Jeremy HOLMES, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory, London 2014. 14 Marga VICEDO, Bindungstheorie, in: Franz Kasper Krönig (ed.), Kritisches Glossar Kindheitspädagogik, Weinheim— Basel 2018, pp.48–54, here p.48. 15 Felix BERTH, Discovering Bowlby. Infant Homes and Attachment Theory in West Germany after the Second World War, Paedagogica Historica 53, 2021, No.3, pp.1–17; C.MOISEL, Geschichte und Psychoanalyse; Mathew THOMSON, Lost Freedom. The Landscape of the Child and the British Post-War Settlement, Oxford 2013; Julia GRANT, Raising Baby by the Book. The Education of American Mothers, New Haven 1998; Nikolas S.ROSE, Governing the Soul. The Shaping of the Private Self, London 1999, pp.167–170.
FRanK HEnScHEL 59 in socialist societies. This blind spot is certainly due in no small part to the persistence of stereotypical ideas about the division between East and West in European (contemporary) history. While there have been repeated calls for overcoming this division, its existence is also perpetuated by questions and analytical contexts focused on the “Eastern Bloc”.16 However, this blind spot also exists because aspects related to the history of knowledge and science have so far played asubordinate role in the now extensive research on the history of childhood under socialism.17 Martina Winkler recently emphasised the importance of “the axiom of ageneral social responsibility for children, the basic concept of achildhood of development and the idea of the need for ascientific, expert-led approach to bringing up children” in socialist Czechoslovakia.18 On the other hand, while the history of knowledge and science has, in recent times, examined the multitude of psychological, psychoanalytical and psychotherapeutic approaches and practices under state socialism,19 the psychology of childhood in general and attachment theory in particular remain largely unexplored, although there are important indications that both have had an important impact.20 16 Most recently pointedly criticised in Markus Krzoska’s review essay on Włodzimierz BORODZIEJ— Stanislav HOLUBEC— Joachim VON PUTTKAMER (edd.), The Routledge History Handbook of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century 1–3, New York 2020: Rezensionsessay: Auf der Suche nach dem verlorenen Raum? Das östliche Europa im “Hand buch”, H-Soz-Kult, 4.4.2023, online: www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-29738 [retrieved 21.4.2023]. 17 Jiří KNAPÍK (ed.), Děti, mládež asocialismus vČeskoslovensku v50.a60.letech [Children, Youth and Socialism in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s], Opava 2014; Jiří KNAPÍK— Martin FRANC (edd.), Mezi pionýrským šátkem amopedem. Děti, mládež asocialismus včeských zemích 1948–1970 [Between the Pioneer Scarf and the Moped. Children, Youth and Socialism in the Czech Lands 1948–1970], Praha 2018. 18 Martina WINKLER, Windeln wechseln für den Sozialismus? Elternratgeber in der Tschechoslowakei (1948–1989), Zeithistorische Forschungen 17, 2020, No.3, pp.445–476, here p.448. 19 Jakub STŘELEC, Genealogie socialistické subjektivity? Přístup kdějinám psy-disciplín vEvropě po roce 1945 vsoudobé historiografii asociologii [AGenealogy of Socialist Subjectivity? Approaches to the History of Psy-Disciplines in Post-1945 Europe in Contemporary Historiography and Sociology], Dějiny— Teorie— Kritika [History— Theory— Criticism] 17, 2020, No.2, pp.222–244; Adéla GJURIČOVÁ, Proměna socialistického člověka vliberální individuum? Psychoterapie vČeskoslovensku po roce 1969 [The Transformation of Socialist Man into aLiberal Individual? Psychotherapy in Czechoslovakia after 1969], in: Michal Kopeček (ed.), Architekti dlouhé změny. Expertní kořeny postsocialismu vČeskoslovensku [Architects of the Long Change. Expert Roots of Post-Socialism in Czechoslovakia], Praha 2019, pp.185–216; Mat SAVELLI— Sarah MARKS (edd.), Psychiatry in Communist Europe, Basingstoke, Hampshire— New York 2015. 20 Kateřina LIŠKOVÁ, Sexual Liberation, Socialist Style. Communist Czechoslovakia and the Science of Desire 1945–1989, Cambridge 2018, pp.163–174; Steven SAXONBERG— Hana HAŠKOVÁ— Jiří MUDRÁK, The Development of Czech Childcare Policies, Praha 2012, pp.45–59.
60 HISTORIE — OTÁZKY — PROBLÉMY 1/2023 My analysis here therefore focuses on the adaptation and further development of attachment theory in socialist Czechoslovakia as an example of the reciprocal transfer and transformation of psychological knowledge in the European post-war period.21 Iwould like to show, firstly, that the reception of attachment theory in socialist Czechoslovakia took place within acontext of challenging the quality of care in residential care institutions, especially children’s homes; that, secondly, the theory became an argument in the discussion about the reform of the children’s home system and family legislation; and that, thirdly, it further developed into research on deprivation conceived more broadly, which in turn provided impulses for transnational discourse. The basic assumption of Bowlby’s attachment theory, namely that children “need awarm continuous relationship with amother or amother substitute, and they need to be dependably loved. [Otherwise they] may develop all sorts of behavioural and mental problems,”22 had not been new. Its development transcended the West-East dichotomy, demonstrating the relevance and interconnectedness of the (Central) European knowledge space in the first half of the 20th century. This space was destroyed by the Nazis and then rebuilt and reconfigured by different political and economic systems.23 In his work, John Bowlby took up the research conducted by the “Viennese School” around Charlotte and Karl Bühler in the 1920s and 1930s as well as the psychological pedagogy of the Austrian August Aichhorn, the psychoanalysis of the Hungarian Sándor Ferenczis and, last but not least, the hospitalism theory of the Viennese psychologist René Spitz, who, like Bühler and many other scientists, had been forced into exile after 1933.24 What Bowlby succeeded at was integrating the above simple and neat axiom into atheory and popularising it greatly after he had been commissioned by the WHO in 1950 to travel to many Western European countries and the US to visit research institutes and care institutions for orphaned and neglected children.25 His report was also printed in 21 Important suggestions for the analysis and representation of knowledge transfers can be found in Anna N.HAMMAR— David L.HEIDENBLAD— Kari NORDBERG— Johan ÖSTING— Erling SANDMO, The History of Knowledge and the Circulation of Knowledge. An Introduction, in: Anna N.Hammar et al. (edd.), Circulation of Knowledge. Explorations into the History of Knowledge, Lund 2018, pp.9–35. 22 Frank VAN DER HORST— Renée VAN DER VEER, The Ontogeny of an Idea. John Bowlby and Contemporaries on Mother-Child Separation, History of Psychology 13, 2010, No.1, pp.25–45, here p.26. 23 Alfons SÖLLNER— Mitchell G.ASH (edd.), Forced Migration and Scientific Change. Emigré German-Speaking Scientists and Scholars after 1933, Cambridge 1996. 24 Katharina ROWOLD, What Do Babies Need to Thrive? Changing Interpretations of “Hospitalism” in an International Context, 1900–1945, Social History of Medicine 32, 2019, No.4, pp.799–818. 25 Frank VAN DER HORST— Karin ZETTERQVIST NELSON— Lenny ROSMALEN— Renée VAN DER VEER, ATale of Four Countries. How Bowlby Used His Trip through Europe to Write the WHO Report and Spread His Ideas, Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences 56, 2020, No.3, pp.169–185.
FRanK HEnScHEL 61 aslightly abridged version in abook in 1953 and quickly became apopular bestseller.26 The book was translated into French, Italian, Spanish and, later, into German. By the 1980s Bowlby had produced many other relevant works,27 none of which were translated into Russian or Czech before 1989. Interestingly, Bowlby also had the chance to travel to Czechoslovakia in 1950. This was prevented at short notice by travel restrictions, but Bowlby expressed no disappointment at all about this in aletter to his wife,28 although the visit would have enabled him to directly study the forms and consequences of expanded state residential care. The expansion of crèches, kindergartens, after-school care centres and children’s homes was the Czechoslovak response to the challenges of the transformation after the Nazi occupation, the war and the expulsion of the German minority, the full integration of women into the labour market and the demand for modern, efficient and comprehensive childcare.29 The belief that residential care institutions were equivalent to the family was not purely aproduct of the new communist ideology: it also grew out of structures of collective upbringing that had been organically evolving since the late 19th century and had ascientific foundation.30 It was shaped by the dominance of aspecific paediatric and pedagogical view31 centred on the body and the collective and reinforced by knowledge transfers from the Soviet Union.32 Many strands of psychology, especially individualising psychoanalytical approaches, had been repudiated since the height of Stalinism.33 Mainstream post-war Czechoslovak psychology, represented for example 26 John BOWLBY, Maternal Care and Mental Health, Geneva 1952; IDEM, Child Care and the Growth of Love. Based […] on the Author’s Report: Maternal Care and Mental Health, Melbourne [and elsewhere] 1953. 27 Especially noteworthy in this context is Bowlby’s three-volume opus magnum, published between 1969 and 1980: IDEM, Attachment and Loss, 3 Volumes, New York 1969–1980. 28 Archives and Manuscripts Welcome Library, London Personal Papers Bowlby, B.1/11, File: Jan–Feb 1950. Geneva, Stockholm, Paris, The Netherlands, John Bowlby’s letters to his wife Ursula, 9 and 11January 1950. Iwould like to thank my dear colleague Frank van der Horst for sharing his materials. 29 See references in footnotes 2 and 3. 30 Tara ZAHRA, “Each Nation Only Cares for its Own”. Empire, Nation, and Child Welfare Activism in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1918, American Historical Review 111, 2006, No.5, pp.1378–1402. 31 Martina WINKLER, Kdo má děti vychovávat ajak? Pedagogika jako klíčový diskurz socialistické společnosti [Who Should Raise the Children and How? Pedagogy as aKey Discourse of Socialist Society], Historie— Otázky— Problémy [History— Questions— Problems] 10, 2018, No.2, pp.60–71; Maria Cristina GALMARINI-KABALA, Psychiatry, Violence, and the Soviet Project of Transformation. AMicro-History of the Perm’ Psycho-Neurological SchoolSana torium, Slavic Review 77, 2018, No.2, pp.307–332. 32 Andy BYFORD, Science of the Child in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia, Oxford 2020. 33 Sarah MARKS, Suggestion, Persuasion and Work. Psychotherapies in Communist Europe, European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling 20, 2018, No.1, pp.10–24; Martin A.MILLER, Freud and the Bolsheviks. Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, New Haven, Conn.— London 1998, pp.69–92.
62 HISTORIE — OTÁZKY — PROBLÉMY 1/2023 by Vladimír Tardy, chair of the discipline’s department at Prague University, was hardly concerned with childhood in the 1940s and 1950s and adhered to the Pavlovian behaviourist school, according to which upbringing and conditioning held the most sway over aperson’s development.34 In addition, the regime and science were at that time still focusing on combating infant and child mortality, which had reached staggering levels in the first half of the century, including especially in residential care institutions. Until the 1950s, the reduction of mortality had been considered amajor task of the health and care sector.35 Czechoslovak paediatricians looked with admiration at the Soviet Union, where crèches and infant homes were considered efficient “health care institutions”.36 Paediatric, pedagogical and behaviourist approaches, which tended to de-emphasise the cognitive and emotional needs of infants and young children, were also dominant in the US and in Western Europe until the middle of the 20th century.37 In Czechoslovakia, however, the prioritisation of health and nutrition, provisioning and employment, upbringing and education of children had an impact, and not only in institutions of residential care, such as children’s homes. Practical guides for parents and families published in this period, including the extremely popular book Péče odítě by the paediatrician Josef Švejcar,38 also contain very little about the need for parental love and primarily discuss food sufficiency, physical and cognitive development and discipline through upbringing.39 In the mid-1950s, however, the first doubts about these paradigms began to appear in Czechoslovakia. Concerns were raised by psychology and psychiatry experts who, as practitioners in the wide network of care, diagnostic and therapeutic institutions (by now residential infant and children’s homes had acapacity of about 15,000) were directly involved with children separated from their parents on an everyday basis. They observed developmental disorders and behavioural problems in the children and these could no longer be explained or addressed by physiological or pedagogical means, but required other instruments. There was also apan-European context to this. As Tara Zahra has shown in her impressive book on the reconfiguration of the concept of childhood during and after World War II, collective institutions such as displaced person camps, foster homes and rehabilitation facilities revealed the vulnerabilities and needs of children beyond material provisioning and became labo34 Vladimír TARDY, Psychologie dítěte adospívající mládeže [Child and Adolescent Psychology], Praha 1955; on Tardy see: Alena PLHÁKOVÁ— Olga PECHOVÁ, Život adílo Vladimíra Tardyho [The Life and Work of Vladimír Tardy], Praha 2012. 35 Jiří BLECHA, Návrh na ochranu vývoje kojence [Proposal for the Protection of Infant Development], Pediatrické listy [Pediatric Letters] 6, 1951, pp.51–56. 36 Kamil KUBÁT— Ferdinand DÉMANT, Péče odítě vSSSR [Child Care in the USSR], Pediatrické listy 6, 1951, pp.327–330, here p.328. 37 K.ROWOLD, What Do Babies Need. 38 Josef ŠVEJCAR, Péče odítě [Child Care], Praha 1951; for adetailed analysis of parenting guides, see M.WINKLER, Windeln wechseln. 39 Július BREZA, Vývoj avýchova dieťaťa [Child Development and Upbringing], Bratislava 1952.
FRanK HEnScHEL 63 ratories of adifferent knowledge of childhood that found expression in Bowlby’s attachment theory, among others.40 In this sense Vladimír Vojtík’s article quoted at the beginning of this paper was the first to address the problems and dangers posed by institutional upbringing for the psychological and emotional development of children in socialist Czechoslovakia. Vojtík describes in drastic terms the behavioural and developmental problems he observed: the children were withdrawn, listless, lethargic or aggressive, would throw tantrums; lack afunctional emotional control and know no boundaries, could not adapt to their environment; their cognitive abilities were limited and their sense of orientation and memory damaged. He sums up the situation as follows: “There is hospitalism there already today.”41 Vojtík thus adopts, without giving any direct reference, as noted above, the classification introduced by the Austrian-American psychologist René A.Spitz in his papers in 1945 and 1946.42 At the same time, Vojtík located the cause of these disorders in the absence of mother, highlighting an aspect with which Spitz was less concerned but which Bowlby focused on in his WHO report. While Vojtík does not call for aradical change of the system, he does provide awarning that is also aforward-looking crisis diagnosis: “It is necessary to improve upbringing in collective institutions for children. If we succeed at this, we will achieve adrop in mental disorders, not only in children but also in adults.”43 Subsequently, he argued in other essays that psychiatrists, paediatricians and educators should work more closely together to prevent the development of these disorders.44 Vojtík’s article already points out two central aspects of the Czechoslovak discussion: the role of residential care institutions as laboratories of knowledge production and the crisis diagnosis directed both at the present and the future of society. Both paved the way for aproductive appropriation of the knowledge offered by developmental psychology and attachment theory. The parallels between Vojtík’s diagnoses and Anglo-American hospitalism and attachment theories were not coincidental: he and other Czechoslovak physicians and psychologists had access to the publications of Spitz, Bowlby, Goldfarb and others, as evidenced by further discussion of the topic. Only ashort time after Vojtík, Marie Damborská, physician and head of the infant home in Luhačovice, east of Brno, discussed in detail Western research on hospitalism and maternal deprivation, giving 40 Tara ZAHRA, The Lost Children. Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II, Cambridge, Mass 2011; summary: EADEM, Lost Children. Displacement, Family, and Nation in Postwar Europe, The Journal of Modern History 81, 2009, No.1, pp.45–86. 41 V.VOJTÍK, Kotázce hospitalismu, p.309. 42 René A.SPITZ, Hospitalism. An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 1, 1945, No.1, pp.53–74; IDEM, Hospitalism. AFollow-up Report, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 2, 1946, No.1, pp.113–117. 43 V.VOJTÍK, Kotázce hospitalismu, p.311. 44 IDEM, Organisace ametodika práce vdětské psychiatrii [Organization and Methodology of Work in Child Psychiatry], Československá pediatrie 12, 1957, No.10, pp.868–873; IDEM, Prevence vdětské psychiatrii [Prevention in Child Psychiatry], Československá pediatrie 12, 1957, No.10, pp.874–880.
64 HISTORIE — OTÁZKY — PROBLÉMY 1/2023 an explicit citation.45 Moreover, she used the cited findings and her own observations as arguments against the existing system of children’s and infant homes. In her article in Československá pediatrie, Damborská, like Vojtík, emphasised the efficiency of the institutions run according to “Soviet principles”, but also called attention to the increased incidence of cognitive and emotional disorders in them. Damborská used Western research as amirror for her own diagnosis of the situation in socialist Czechoslovakia: on the one hand, she argued that these impairments occurred much less frequently there and were in any case reversible; in addition, many children, she said, came to the homes, where the children were first “properly” cared for, with prior conditions, caused by “moronic” and “callous” mothers.46 On the other hand, she argued that structural changes were needed to prevent and treat these impairments, but that those could not consist simply in leaving the child with his/her mother. Damborská did not reject residential care institutions, quite the contrary. However, she called, interestingly with reference to Scandinavian institutions, for more and better qualified staff and the merging of infant and toddler homes in order to minimise disruptive changes in the care environment at an early age.47 Early childhood was labelled aparticularly vulnerable phase of life in which the prevailing paradigms of care and provisioning without sufficient emotional attention no longer applied. Damborská thus not only took up the central findings of Anglo-American hospitalism research and attachment theory and combined them with her own observations, but also translated them into specific care policy demands. Like Vojtík, however, she did not call for aradical change of course and question the system as awhole. In her view, socialism always offered “better” conditions for child-friendly care, whose structure, however, needed to be improved. While Damborská praised the health and care system of socialist Czechoslovakia in richly illustrated brochures addressed to Western countries,48 in her other work on infants and toddlers in her institution, again following Spitz, Goldfarb and Bowlby, she brought to light serious developmental deficits that were increasingly regarded as permanent and repeated her demands for better equipment in the homes.49 In 1963, Damborská also participated in the documentary film Děti bez lásky [Children Without Love], which exposed the conditions in Czechoslovakian children’s homes, crèches and similar institutions and was withdrawn by the Ministry of Health after afew screenings.50 45 Marie DAMBORSKÁ, Některé aktuální otázky výchovy ústavních dětí [Some Current Issues in the Education of Institutionalised Children], Československá pediatrie 12, 1957, No.10, pp.893–898. 46 Ibid., p.896. 47 Ibid., p.895. 48 EADEM, ČSSR pečuje oděti [Czechoslovakia Cares for Children], Praha 1962. Her book was simultaneously published in German, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian. 49 EADEM, Rozdíly mezi dítětem vychovávaným vrodině avústavu během 1.roku [ Differences between aChild Brought up in aFamily and in an Institution During the First Year], Československá pediatrie 12, 1957, No.7, pp.980–990. 50 Zdeněk MATĚJČEK— Jan JANDOUREK— Markéta ELBLOVÁ, Zdeněk Matějček. Naděje není vkouzlech [Zdeněk Matějček. Hope Does Not Lie in Magic], Praha 1999, p.128.
FRanK HEnScHEL 71 The specific implementation of the reforms in the institutional and administrative structures, the scope and content of the public discussions in the 1960s and the transmission of knowledge related to developmental psychology and attachment theory to care practitioners and parents are some of the many aspects that remain underexplored and still require thorough and comprehensive research. It can be assumed that the “child question” was much more important in the reform processes of the 1960s and the Prague Spring than previously thought. The parallels between the call for a“third way”, a“socialism with ahuman face”, and Josef Langmeier’s plea for care and upbringing to be geared towards “giving children the opportunity for free self-realisation in ahumane and democratic society”82 are unmistakable. RÉSUMÉ: The paper shows that knowledge about child development and needs fundamentally changed in communist Czechoslovakia between 1950 and 1970 and that this had far-reaching consequences for care policy. This change was stimulated by the transfer and adaptation of knowledge related to developmental psychology, especially Anglo-American hospitalism and attachment theories. The paper therefore analyses the adaptation and further development of this knowledge— especially the attachment theory proposed by the British psychologist John Bowlby— by Czechoslovak psychologists, paediatricians and educators as an example of the transfer of psychological knowledge during the Cold War. It argues, firstly, that the reception of attachment theory took place in the context of challenging the quality of residential care institutions for children, especially children’s homes; that, secondly, the received knowledge became an argument in the discussion about reform of the children’s home system and family legislation; and that, thirdly, it was further developed into aresearch on deprivation conceived more broadly, which in turn provided impulses for transnational discourse. The article thus sheds new light on the temporal, spatial and discursive dimensions of the psychologization of childhood in the second half of the 20th century, which have so far been largely left unexplored in socialist societies. Dr. Frank Henschel is aresearch assistant at the Department of Eastern European History at the Seminar of History, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. He holds aDoctor’s degree from the University of Leipzig for athesis on multiethnicity and nationalism in Kassa/Košice/Kaschau between 1867 and 1918. Subsequently, he conducted research under several third-party funded projects on the history of childhood, care and disability in socialist societies, especially in post-1945 Czechoslovakia ([email protected]). 82 Josef LANGMEIER, Náhradní péče odítě očima psychologa [Substitute Child Care through the Eyes of aPsychologist], Československá pediatrie 24, 1969, No.10, pp.865–872, here p.871.