Bowlby Juvenile Study

Bowlby Juvenile Study In the following essay I will be looking at the case study of John Bowlby and the 44 Juvenile thieves. I will be describing the original hypothesis of the study and what Bowlby aimed to find. I will then look at two other key psychological studies into human behaviour. Once I have looked at all three of the studies, I will then look at the research methods used by all three. I will closely look at the ethical implications of the studies as well as the practical applications used in each. John Bowlby (1907-1990) was a Psychoanalyst who worked at the London Child Guidance Clinic between 1936 and 1939. Bowlby believed that mental health and behavioural problems could be attached to early childhood experience just as Freud did. He aimed to prove that separation from Mothers or sole carers before the age of five affected children’s adolescent behaviour. Bowlby took 44 patients that had come into his clinic who were thieves that had been recommended by their school, parents or soci al carers. The group of thieves were split into two groups, these were grade I who had only stolen once, and the other was grade IV who were repeat offenders. He then took another group of 44 children who were emotionally disturbed but not thieves, this group was known as the control group. The 88 children involved in this study were all aged between five and sixteen. In the group of thieves there were 31 boys and 13 girls whilst in the control group there were 34 boys and 10 girls. There were three key studies in this case study which were run by a psychologist, social worker and a psychiatrist. The first was an IQ test which was invigilated by one of the clinic psychologists; the test was done as each of the participants entered into the clinic. The psychologist found that as well as all of the participants being similar in age, they were all similar in their IQ so they were no anomalies when comparing the educational background of the children. The second study was an interview o f the participant’s parents that was held by a social worker, the aim of this was to record details of the child’s early life. The third study was an interview held with the child and the parent that they were with; this was held by a psychiatrist to see if the details given by the parents matched with those of the child. The social worker and psychiatrist made separate reports which were compared when they had completed them in regard to each child. Once the reports had been compared, the children were then split into different groups, these were; Normal No Abnormal symptoms Depressed Showing symptoms of depression Circular Showing symptoms of depression and over activity Hyperthymic Over activity Affectionless No affection for others and no sense of shame or responsibility Schizoid Withdrawn and lacking relationships with others Priggish Showing symptoms of anxiety or hysteria    The results have some significant anomalies; the 14 affect ionless characters are statistically significant, this is because 13 of the 14 (93%) were grade IV thieves; this clearly shows that the affectionless have been very misguided and uncared for in the childhood. Over half of the grade IV thieves were affectionless. Other findings are that 19 of the cases had suffered prolonged separation from their sole carer during their first five years. 17 of the 19 that had suffered prolonged separation were thieves and 12 of these 17 were classed as affectionless. Of the 23 that were grade IV thieves, 14 of them had suffered prolonged separation.