A review by jessrock
Love At Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection by Deborah Blum
3.0
Love at Goon Park was very interesting while also very frustrating and incredibly flawed. In the preface, [a:Deborah Blum|16175|Deborah Blum|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1331590529p2/16175.jpg] discusses writing an earlier book ([b:The Monkey Wars|507590|The Monkey Wars|Deborah Blum|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347474862s/507590.jpg|495614]) that angered people who knew Harry Harlow so much that many of them were wary of ever speaking to her again. She then launches into an entire book on Harry Harlow, much of it quite positive or at least minimally critical of his experiments and of him as a person. It's not till the epilogue that she shares any of the criticisms against him or offers any information that indicates that she might not have been unbiased in her narrative.
With that in mind, Love at Goon Park was still an interesting look at the state of psychology in the first half of the twentieth century and the changes that came about, both intellectually in the field of psychology and practically in hospitals and homes, because of Harry Harlow's studies on affection and touch. Harlow focused specifically on primate research and the relationship between mothers and children, and many of his experiments sound by today's standards to be unnecessarily cruel - raising babies with artificial mothers made of cloth or wire, or putting monkeys in total isolation and depriving them of any contact with others. The epilogue wrestles a tiny bit with the question of whether and how we can justify cruelty in experiments if it results in a better understanding of our world, but otherwise the book does not take a critical or questioning stance at all. Likewise, the book also describes Harlow's personal life - his difficulties in his marriages and his failings as a father - but doesn't dwell at all on the irony of the psychologist who studies love and the importance of touch while completely neglecting to interact with his children.
I learned quite a bit from reading Love at Goon Park and so I don't regret reading it, but I do think that the author felt an obligation to speak positively about Harry Harlow in order to gain access to the people she wanted to interview, and that the book was not honest with its readers as a result. The epilogue hints at how a more evenhanded treatment of Harry Harlow might have played out, but that is not the book we received, and I really can't recommend it as a result.
With that in mind, Love at Goon Park was still an interesting look at the state of psychology in the first half of the twentieth century and the changes that came about, both intellectually in the field of psychology and practically in hospitals and homes, because of Harry Harlow's studies on affection and touch. Harlow focused specifically on primate research and the relationship between mothers and children, and many of his experiments sound by today's standards to be unnecessarily cruel - raising babies with artificial mothers made of cloth or wire, or putting monkeys in total isolation and depriving them of any contact with others. The epilogue wrestles a tiny bit with the question of whether and how we can justify cruelty in experiments if it results in a better understanding of our world, but otherwise the book does not take a critical or questioning stance at all. Likewise, the book also describes Harlow's personal life - his difficulties in his marriages and his failings as a father - but doesn't dwell at all on the irony of the psychologist who studies love and the importance of touch while completely neglecting to interact with his children.
I learned quite a bit from reading Love at Goon Park and so I don't regret reading it, but I do think that the author felt an obligation to speak positively about Harry Harlow in order to gain access to the people she wanted to interview, and that the book was not honest with its readers as a result. The epilogue hints at how a more evenhanded treatment of Harry Harlow might have played out, but that is not the book we received, and I really can't recommend it as a result.