James W. Prescott has made a major contribution to the Psychology by his research on the origins of Peace and Violence.
It is generally known (back to medieval or ancient times) that deprivation of sensory stimuli like voice and vision in the early phases of human life will cause irreversible mental retardation in the child. Also the prevention of child play will cause intellectual deficits in the adult. But eyes, ears and the nose are not the only human sensory systems.
Additionally there are the two body sensor systems, the "somatosensors". One is the vestibular sensor for maintaining orientation and upright walk. The other one is the skin, for sensing touch.
Through the work of James W. Prescott, Ph.D. and various others until the mid 1970s it was established that these previously neglected senses are of overwhelming importance for the development of social abilities for adult life. Their deprivation in childhood is a major cause for adult violence.
James W. Prescott, Ph.D., was a health scientist administrator at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), one of the Institutes of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1966 to 1980. He created and directed the Developmental Behavioral Biology Program at the NICHD where he initiated NICHD supported research programs that documented how the failure of "Mother Love" in infant monkeys adversely affected the biological development of their brains. These astonishing abnormal brain changes underlie the behaviors of depression, impulse dyscontrol and violence that result from mother-infant separations.
These behavioral effects were confirmed in his anthropological studies on primitive cultures including the effects of sensory deprivation of human sexual pleasure and affection during adolescence and written up in the paper Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence. The results of these scientific studies do not support the many traditional religious and cultural values throughout the world, which deny the importance of "Mothering" and of youth affectional sexual relationships for peaceful and loving behaviors.
The continuation of this research was obstructed and eventually cancelled by the NICHD. Even the existence and results of these NICHD supported research programs was consciously omitted in a recent NIH publication.
Mother Bonding is Essensial for Peace
Cultures that Punish Infants or Repress Sexuality are Violent
External Links
