How important is human physical contact? It is so important that at critical periods people will die without it. Rene Spitz conducted a study of ninety-one infants in a foundling home who had been separated from their mothers. These infants were fed by a succession of nurses and given only perfunctory physical contact. Thirty-four of them died by the second year, while others went on to develop numerous symptoms. All of the infants showed manifestations of severe separation anxiety; then angry crying and clinging (trying to control or destroy the frustrating environment); then anaclitic depression (aggression turned against the self); then motor retardation; then marasmus (withdrawal into apathy); and finally—all too often—death. Others have replicated this study.

Similar drastic responses to the frustration of Eros can be observed in adults, as when a husband or wife suddenly dies and the spouse dies a short time later, without there having been any normal precipitating illness; or as when a scorned lover goes on a destructive spree of gambling, drug abuse, or promiscuous sex or kills his mate or himself.

*10/196/1*

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