Czech Twins Study

449 Words2 Pages
The Czech twins is a study about how the effects of privation can be reversed and how Bowlby's hypothesis of "no attachment" before the age of 3 is false. The Czech twins where identical twins who were born in 1960. Their names where Andrei and Vanya. They had normal development even though their mother died very shortly after birth. The boys where then taken care of by a social agency for about a year and then fostered by a maternal aunt for another six months. In this time the twins both had normal development both mentally and socially with their attachments. After their father remarried they went back to live with the father but the step mother wasn't the nicest of all women. She banished them to the cellar for the next five and a half years of their life not letting them out and not allowing them to see the father whom was absent from the house most of the time due to his job. After about 5 years when the twins where at the age of seven they where lacking speech, where dwarfs as they didn't grow, suffered from rickets and did not understand what a picture meant. The doctors who examined them said that they will be permanently physically and mentally handicapped for the rest of their lives due to the situation that they where put in. The twins where then removed from their parents and underwent a programme which would redeem them and hopefully return them back to a normal state. The twins where then entered into a school with severe learning disabilities. After spending some time in the school the twins where then legally adopted by a dedicated woman who wanted to take care of the two boys. The woman who took care of them changed them from being in a profound disability to being able to talk to peers their age and achieve emotional and intellectual normality. The boys then trained to become typewriter mechanics but then later in life undertook further
Open Document