Quoted By:
>Harlow also wanted to test how isolation would affect parenting skills, but the isolates were unable to mate. Artificial insemination had not then been developed; instead, Harlow devised what he called a "rape rack", to which the female isolates were tied in normal monkey mating posture. He found that, just as they were incapable of having sexual relations, they were also unable to parent their offspring, either abusing or neglecting them. "Not even in our most devious dreams could we have designed a surrogate as evil as these real monkey mothers were", he wrote.[8] Having no social experience themselves, they were incapable of appropriate social interaction. One mother held her baby's face to the floor and chewed off his feet and fingers. Another crushed her baby's head. Most of them simply ignored their offspring.[8]
>The technical name for the new depression chamber was "vertical chamber apparatus", though Harlow himself insisted on calling it the "pit of despair". He had at first wanted to call it the "dungeon of despair", and also used terms like "well of despair", and "well of loneliness". Blum writes that his colleagues tried to persuade him not to use such descriptive terms, that a less visual name would be easier, politically speaking. Gene Sackett of the University of Washington in Seattle, one of Harlow's doctoral students who went on to conduct additional deprivation studies, said, "He first wanted to call it a dungeon of despair. Can you imagine the reaction to that?".[9]