Pit of despair

The pit of despair was an experiment conducted on rhesus macaque monkeys during the 1970s by American comparative psychologist Harry Harlow at the University of Wisconsin. The aim of the research was to investigate the causes of clinical depression.

The pit itself was what the researchers called a "vertical chamber apparatus". It was a dark, vertical, V-shaped metal chamber, an inverted pyramid, with netting at the top and polished, slippery sides. Harlow placed baby monkeys in the chamber alone for up to six weeks, feeding them through a grate at the top, so that they were trapped in the point of the V, and had no human or animal contact other than seeing the researcher's hands when they were fed.

The monkeys were found to be psychotic when removed from the chamber, and most did not recover.

Background
Harlow's first experiments into the effects of loneliness involved isolating a monkey in his cage surrounded by steel walls with a small one-way mirrors, so the experimenters could look in, but the monkey couldn't look out. The only connection the monkey had with the world was when the experimenters' hands changed his bedding or delivered fresh water and food. Baby monkeys were placed in these boxes from soon after birth; four were left for 30 days, four for six months, and four for a year.

After 30 days, the "total isolates," as they were called, were found to be "enormously disturbed": two of them refused to eat and starved themselves to death. After being isolated for a year, the monkeys were found initially to barely move, didn't explore or play, were incapable of having sexual relations. When put with other monkeys for a daily play session, they were badly bullied by the other monkeys.

In order to find out how the isolates would parent, Harlow devised what he called a "rape rack," to which the female isolates were tied in the position taken by a normal female monkey in order to be impregnated. Artifical insemination had not been developed at that time. 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. 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.

These experiments showed Harlow what total and partial isolation did to developing monkeys, but he felt he hadn't captured the essence of depression, which he felt was characterized by feelings of loneliness, helplessness, and a sense of being trapped, or being "sunk in a well of despair," he said.

Vertical chamber apparatus
The technical name for the new depression chamber was "vertical chamber apparatus," though Harlow himself called it the pit of despair, well of despair, dungeon of despair, and well of loneliness.

It was shaped like a narrow inverted pyramid, wide at the top and slanting down to a point, with no light inside. Most of the monkeys placed inside it were at least three months old and had already bonded with others. The point of the experiment was to break those bonds in order to create the symptoms of depression.

The monkeys would typically spend the first few days trying to scramble up the steep, smooth sides, and would then give up. According to Harlow: "most subjects typically assume a hunched position in a corner of the bottom of the apparatus. One might presume at this point that they find their situation to be hopeless."

One researcher, Steven Suomi, placed some monkeys in the chamber for his PhD. He wrote that he could find no monkey who had any defense against it. Even the happiest monkeys came out damaged. He concluded that even a happy, normal childhood was no defense against depression.

Criticism
The experiments delivered what Deborah Blum has called "common sense results": that monkeys, very social animals in nature, when placed in isolation emerge badly damaged, and that some recover and some do not.

Gene Sackett of the University of Washington in Seattle told Blum that, in his view, the animal liberation movement in the U.S. was born as a result of Harlow's experiments. Willam Mason, who worked with Harlow, told Blum that Harlow "kept this going to the point where it was clear to many people that the work was really violating ordinary sensibilities, that anybody with respect for life or people would find this offensive. It's as if he sat down and said, 'I'm only going to be around another ten years. What I'd like to do, then, is leave a great big mess behind.' If that was his aim, he did a perfect job."