Seeing Babies in a New Light

The Life of Hanus Papousek

Otto Koester

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415651653
• eBook ISBN: 9781135632885
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Seeing Babies in a New Light: The Life of Hanus Papousek presents the first in-depth examination of the scientific contributions and life of Hanus Papousek (1922-2000), a leading figure in modern infancy research. The aim is to illuminate the research and ideas of this pediatrician and scholar who was one of the first to examine systematically the world of newborns, a relatively new area of developmental research in the mid-20th century.Papousek's pioneering studies of infants in the early 1950s in Prague are examined to show how his early conditioning studies, together with those of a handful of other researchers in the U.S., shattered prevailing views of infancy in both the East and West. The book also investigates how Papousek and his work, despite Cold War attitudes and restrictions, gradually gained international attention in the early 1960s. In 1970, he left Czechoslovakia to begin a new life in the West, first at Harvard University, and then at the Max-Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich. Until his retirement, Papousek published many innovative studies on parent-infant interactions and developed a theory of Intuitive Parenting with his wife, Mechthild. These theoretical and methodological contributions are discussed, as well as contemporary applications to interventions in the area of infant mental health.This book appeals to teachers and professionals working in the fields of developmental psychology, early childhood education, infancy studies, parenting, and the history of psychology--as well as students preparing for careers in these areas.

Chapter 1

Hanuš Papoušek: Youth, Education, and Early Professional Years

In 1961 and 1962, at the height of the Cold War, a number of American psychologists traveled to Europe and the Soviet Union to familiarize themselves with research being conducted on learning in children and infants, a subject of growing attention in American developmental psychology. Working under the auspices of the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) Committee on Intellective Processes, they visited well-known research centers such as the Pavlov Institute in Leningrad and the Rousseau Institute in Geneva headed by Jean Piaget. Two of the psychologists—William Kessen, of Yale University, and Frank Palmer, an SRCC staff member—also visited the newly established Institute for the Care of Mother and Child in Prague. Coincidentally, the person assigned as their guide was Hanuš Papoušek, a pediatrician and psychologist in charge of research on “higher nervous activities” in infants. Fortunately for the visitors, Papoušek spoke English proficiently.

By all accounts, the Americans were somewhat surprised by what they saw. The Institute was much larger and the experiments and observations much more extensive than they had expected. Moreover, the infants being studied were just 0 to 3 days old, much younger than those studied anywhere else in the United States or Western Europe. Most impressive of all were their interactions with Hanuš Papoušek, who not only answered all of Kessen’s questions, but also showed him the laboratory, observation equipment, and data records (Dittrichová Interview, October 7, 1999). This openness stood in marked contrast to the reception that the American visitors had received at the Pavlov Institute in Leningrad, where the two visitors met with Institute directors in their offices, but were not allowed to meet any of the researchers or see the insides of the laboratories.

After returning to the United States, Kessen sent a report to the SSRC in which he called particular attention to the Institute for the Care of Mother and Child as a model of how infancy research might be undertaken in the United States if appropriate funding was made available. Soon after receiving this report, the SSRC extended an invitation to Hanuš Papoušek to visit the United States for a conference on comparative developmental processes and to spend 2 months (accompanied by Palmer) giving lectures and colloquia at Yale, New York University, the National Institute of Mental Health, UCLA, Stanford, and University of California–Berkeley. In short, by late summer 1963, Hanuš Papoušek, virtually unknown outside Czechoslovakia, suddenly found himself a “hot commodity” in the world of contemporary American psychology, and a rising “star” in the emerging international community of early developmental and infancy research.

But, who was this person with the name many Americans found hard to pronounce—Hanuš Papoušek? What was his background, what were his views on infancy, and what were some of his methods and preconceptions for studying newborns? If he was not a psychologist by training, then what was the scientific basis for his contention that infants were capable of performing many more tasks at birth than American psychologists previously had thought? And what about the Institute for the Care of Mother and Child? Was it not subject to the political controls of the Czech government and the dicta of the Communist Party? These kinds of questions likely were on the minds of at least some Americans who heard Papoušek speak, especially at a time when “speaker ban” laws existed on some U.S. campuses, and political tensions between East and West were at their height.

To explore these questions, this chapter first examines Hanuš Papoušek’s background, beginning with his youth, education, and early professional training, and ending with his early years at the Institute for the Care of Mother and Child in Prague. It is argued that the direction of Papoušek’s life was integrally related to larger events in the 20th-century history of Czechoslovakia, but that he also underwent an intellectual and personal development that was very much his own. Indeed, in the same way that much of 20th-century Czech history has been described as an effort by the Czechs to define their own path, so too can the life and scientific ideas of Hanuš Papoušek.

CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL YEARS: 1922–1941

It is fair to say that Hanuš Papoušek’s early life paralleled that of a new generation of Czechs born after World War I—a generation that grew up experiencing the hopes of a newly independent, democratic country, only to see their nation fall victim to a brutal Nazi occupation and the horrors of World War II. After the war, many members of this generation also joined in reconstructing Czechoslovakia for the purpose of building a more just and humane society under the leadership of the Communist Party. In the process of growing up and surviving the war, Hanuš Papoušek and many members of his generation also became involved in the political reform movement of Alexander Dubcek, which called for the creation of “socialism with a human face”; unfortunately, these dreams were harshly extinguished by the 1968 Soviet invasion. Hanuš Papoušek, working as a pediatrician and scientist, was one of this generation’s best examples.

Knowledge of Papoušek’s family background and early youth is based largely on anecdotes and stories that he told friends and colleagues later in life. To be sure, anyone who has worked with source materials consisting of recollections and retrospections understands that, by their very nature, such sources are the product of adulthood, and they may not reflect accurately the insights or lessons experienced during youth. At the same time, such materials offer interesting clues about formative youthful experiences that are perceived to be important for that person’s later development. This is the case with the recollections of Hanuš Papoušek.

In a 1996 conversation with the Canadian psychologist Darwin Muir, for instance, Papoušek reminisced about his early life by saying that his formative experiences revolved around a combination of three basic themes: developmental psychology, biology, and medicine, and his desire to help prepare a new generation of postwar youth to deal more effectively with problems of conflict and peace (Muir Interview, October 26, 1996). As a broad summary, this retrospection undoubtedly is correct, but it also leaves many details and nuances unsaid. Indeed, as one examines recollections more closely, a more complicated picture of his early life begins to emerge.

Papoušek was born on September 9, 1922, in a small town of Moravia called Letovice. When still young, Hanuš’ family moved to Brno, the Moravian capital. He lived there until 1949, when he was 28. By all accounts he was raised in a warm and caring environment. His immediate family consisted of his parents, himself, and a younger sister. Hanuš recalled being proud of the fact that both his parents were Moravians, and both came from educated families. His father was a teacher who came from a family of educators, biologists, and musicians (although it bears noting that he also was a military officer in World War I). His mother came from an educated family as well, and after marrying his father, became a housewife. As an adult, Hanuš liked to point out that his grandfather was a musician and colleague of the Czech composer Leo Janácek, and he himself grew up learning to play the piano. In old age, Hanuš enjoyed showing visitors to his home in Munich a life-size poster of his mother (photographed by himself, of course) leaning over the kitchen table and baking Marillenknödel, or apricot-filled dumplings, a Moravian delicacy that was Hanuš’ favorite childhood dessert.

His family moved to Brno when his father, after several years as a small-town teacher, was offered a job as the director of a school. In addition to being the Moravian capital, Brno had a university and offered many intellectual and cultural opportunities for an intellectually gifted and multitalented child like Hanuš. The Papoušek family was happy living in Brno, a town to which Hanuš became very attached. The 1920s and early 1930s were also a good time for Czechoslovakia, which, thanks to a relatively speedy recovery from World War I, enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in all of Europe. In the political realm, enormous strides were also being made. To everyone’s surprise, the end of World War I brought defeat to Germany and Austria–Hungary, but the Czechs received something they had been unable to attain for almost 300 years—independence achieved by peaceful means. For the first time since 1621, the destiny of these proud people lay in their own hands. Many Americans still hold the view that Czechoslovakia’s independence was largely a gift from Woodrow Wilson under the terms of the Versailles Treaty. However, European historians tend to agree that Czechoslovakia’s nationhood would not have come about without the political skills of several of the country’s key leaders, or without the support for these leaders among the general Czech population (Korbel, 1977, pp. 25–38). With the patriarchal and stifling political and social order of the Habsburg Empire finally gone, the nation started to thrive under a democratic constitution and the humane leadership of its founding president, Thomas Masaryk.

It is significant to note that Papoušek mentioned the name of Thomas Masaryk quite frequently as an adult, and that Masaryk played an important role in his father’s life. Hanuš’ father was a great admirer of Masaryk. Like Hanuš’ father, he was a native of Moravia and developed a moral vision of society that was firmly grounded in the tradition of Czech humanism; Hanuš’ father shared Masaryk’s commitment to a combination of nationalism, democracy, and socialism in building an independent Czechoslovakia. Toward the end of World War I, Hanuš’ father and uncle were members of the “Masaryk Legion” in Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution. By the time the “Masaryk Legion” was disbanded (with aid from the Americans), Hanuš’ father had risen to the rank of captain. In addition, when his father became the director of a school, it was at the newly built “Masaryk School” in Brno.

The Masaryk School was one of several educational experiments launched by the Ministry of Education for the purpose of overcoming socioeconomic and ethnic differences among young children, one of the major goals of the new Masaryk regime. The school in Brno was situated midway between the richest and poorest sections of town; Hanuš later remembered the impact of discussions with his father about the effect of education on children’s attitudes, and the extent to which their attitudes were being changed. “The poor children came from the poorest possible part of Brno,” he once said in an interview. “It was a slum area where you could really see terrible things, really at the bottom. … This had an effect on my thoughts” (Papoušek Interview, July 21, 1998). As an adult, Hanuš also became a great admirer of Masaryk who, together with the 17th-century educator and moral teacher Jan Amos Comenius, became one of several Moravians in his pantheon of heroes. (Papoušek liked to cite Comenius in his scientific publications. In 1965, for example, he introduced his first publication to appear in English with a tribute to Comenius for his early interest in child development. Similar tributes can be found in articles Papoušek wrote in the 1990s.)

At age 14, around 1936, Hanuš’ interests began to focus more on school, reflecting his growing interest in the world of ideas. Interestingly, after completion of primary school, he did not enroll in the city’s traditional Gymnasium, as might have been expected, but in Brno’s 2nd Realgymnasium. It says a great deal about Hanuš and his educational background that he did not attend the more prestigious humanities-oriented Gymnasium with its emphasis on Latin, Greek, and classical philosophy, but instead chose the modern and “realistic” Realgymnasium with its emphasis on the natural sciences, mathematics, philosophy, and modern languages. His father, as an educator, must have known that the Realgymnasium was a better match for his son’s talents. It appears to have been a good choice, because Hanuš was an excellent student in all subjects, and upon graduation stood near the top of his class.

During his Realgymnasium years, Papoušek also showed signs of becoming interested in foreign travel and making international contacts, a passion that continued throughout his adult life. (Professional colleagues who knew Hanuš well enough sometimes teased him about his seeming compulsion to attend yet another international conference or visit a new foreign country: “Hanuš, exactly which international meeting are you off to this time?”) In late 1936, Hanuš, at his own initiative, found a boy his age in Yugoslavia who was interested in a student-to-student exchange. The agreement was that the Yugoslav boy would spend summer 1937 with Hanuš and his family in Brno, and Hanuš would spend summer 1938 in Yugoslavia. When the Yugoslav boy came to Brno, the two became fast friends, but when it came time for Hanuš to visit Yugoslavia, his parents refused to give him permission to go. Concerned about the growing danger of war with Germany, his parents preferred to keep him closer to home.

In 1938, the carefree days of Hanuš’ childhood were coming to an end. His parents’ refusal to allow him to go abroad was significant not so much as a missed opportunity to visit his first foreign country, but because, for the first time in his life, an inescapable political problem intervened in his personal plans. Masaryk died in 1937 and shortly thereafter Hitler threatened to invade Czechoslovakia in order to “bring home” the German minority living in the borderlands of the Sudetenland. Disregarding the Munich agreement of September 1938, Hitler ordered German tanks across the Czech border on October 1, 1938, and started a 6-year military occupation, one of the most ruthless and brutal imposed by the Nazis. The effect of these events was to confront Hanuš and every Czech adult and child with fundamental fears about the safety of their country and their personal lives, and force them to ask themselves what kind of action they would be prepared to take. Trauma and tumult entered everyone’s life. Asked to reflect on these events, Papoušek later said:

Hanuš with mother, Aloisie Papoušek, and sister, Véra.

If I now compare my kids today, well, there’s nothing comparable. There are no worries about war over here or there, and in practical terms there’s just nothing—just questions about tactical moves, and some discussion afterwards of those moves, but not about real, major problems. Whereas for us, it was critical. … (Don’t ask me) to write the history of Czechoslovakia, but I’m just explaining that in practical terms, in everyday life, you were exposed to a mixture of philosophical, religious, scientific and political issues because it’s difficult to separate those things from each other. … The mobilization meant practically, for me, that our Gymnasium was taken by the Czech military forces as a unit of a hospital. And we had to continue our studies at different schools around town and share rooms in their facilities. So there was an engagement which went through all parts of your present life. … From a political point of view, these kinds of … things … actually pushed you away from politics. I found scientific questions, and scientific interests and friends much more attractive than these political problems. Because, you know, … we were French-oriented, tremendously French-oriented, so that this Munich agreement was a great disaster—a moral disaster—for the young generation. So we had to just somehow cope with it. (Papoušek Interview, July 14, 1998)

Hanuš as infant.

Hanuš as a young boy.

Hanuš the Boy Scout.

Hanuš and young friends on bicycle trip near Brno, Czechoslovakia.

“Just somehow cope with it”? From a contemporary perspective, one is tempted to say, how typically Czech! In many ways, Papoušek’s response is reminiscent of a recurring theme in Czechoslovakia’s tortured history—an example that the Czechs once again were holding back from defending their personal liberty at any price. On the other hand, perhaps such a judgment is made too readily. Then, as well as today, the question remains open whether or not Edvard Beneš, Masaryk’s successor as president of the First Republic, was correct in calculating that military resistance against the Germans was futile and would cost too many Czech lives. For our purposes here, let it suffice to note that the Nazi occupation posed a very real threat to Hanuš’ father, his uncle, and their families. By virtue of their service in the Masaryk Legion, both his father and his uncle had extensive personal contacts among the underground network of democratic leaders, and both had fears of being found out. When the Nazi troops came, Hanuš’ uncle, living in a small southern Moravian town in the Sudetenland region, was reported to the German authorities for turning around street signs to confuse the entering Nazi troops and lead them in a different direction. (Czechs did the same thing when Soviet troops invaded in 1968.) His uncle died during the early part of the German occupation in a concentration camp.

From a different point of view, however, Papoušek’s recollections about the events of 1938 contain a very revealing insight about himself. Confronted by violence, oppression, and human disrespect, he felt “pushed” away from the political world, while the world of science, scientific questions, and scientific friends drew him in. In comparing both worlds, he recognized that science and scientific inquiry “attracted” him more. It was a remarkable lesson for someone at that early age to learn, and one to which later chapters return.

Toward the end of his Gymnasium years, Hanuš became increasingly interested in psychology and the natural sciences, particularly biology. His philosophy teacher was a psychologist by training who left a lifelong impression on Hanuš by conducting psychological demonstrations and tests in front of the class. This was very unusual for Czech schools at the time, and Hanuš frequently was called on to help recruit young children from his father’s school as subjects for the teacher’s experiments. His interest in biology began as early as age 11, when he already had his own microscope and started to conduct observations on algae. Beginning at age 14, his father’s brother, a professional biologist, began to take him under his wing. The uncle, Jan Kalášek, had been a university professor before the Nazi invasion, but was reassigned to teach at a lower level in an agricultural vocational school in Brno. As fortune would have it, the uncle’s laboratory was within sight of Hanuš’ home, and the professor began spending many hours showing Hanuš how to set up systematic experiments. “I had my own microscope at home,” Hanuš remembered, “but I had an even better one at my uncle’s laboratory, and he acted like a consultant who was always available to me” (Papoušek Interview, July 21, 1998).

In addition to Kalášek, another professional biologist also began teaching Hanuš. A friend of his father’s, he often spent weeks with the Papoušek family during their summer vacations in the countryside, and frequently took Hanuš on long nature walks to study different kinds of plants and animals. “Long before becoming interested in medicine,” Hanuš remembered, “issues like evolution, different comparative approaches to motives in human behavior and animal behavior—I knew a lot about these things” (Muir Interview, October 26, 1996). Guided by his biologist uncle and the family friend, he recalled finding something in the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Hanuš Papoušek: Youth, Education, and Early Professional Years
• 2 The Early Prague Years: A Scientific Basis for Modern Infancy Studies
• 3 The Scientist as a Policy Figure: Child-Care Reform and “The First Swallow” of the Prague Spring
• 4 Early Recognition Abroad
• 5 From Prague to Harvard: The Transition from East to West
• 6 The Early Years in Munich
• 7 Including the Parent in the Dyad: Developing a Theory of Intuitive Parenting
• 8 Retirement Years, Current Applications, and Legacy
• References
• Appendix A: List of Publications
• Author Index
• Subject Index