This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
In the middle of the 20th century, the influential psychoanalyst Eric Ericsson came up with a set of theories about human development in the earliest stage of life.
He said, babies need to gain a sense of trust in their caregivers.
To bring this about, the psychoanalyst recommended that parents shower their children with affection and quickly respond to signals of distress.
These concepts were to become influential in the field later known as developmental psychology.
In 1944, Eric Ericsson's ideas were put to the test.
In his own life.
His wife, Joan Erickson, gave birth to their fourth child, Neil.
The labor proved difficult, and Joan was sedated after the birth.
Meanwhile, doctors pulled Eric aside to give him some bad news about his newborn son.
The doctor said that baby Neil suffered from what they called Mongolism, or mongolian idiocy, what is today known as down syndrome.
Neil was going to be developmentally challenged and would likely die within a short period of time.
Rather than burden the parents with the care of such a difficult baby, the doctors recommended that Neil be immediately sent away to an institution.
Tormented by the decision before him, Eric Erickson did what a lot of us might do in his situation.
He phoned a friend.
But in his case, the friend happened to be one of the most famous anthropologists of all time, a scholar who had challenged the idea that our biology makes us who we are.
Very much like Eric Erickson himself, Margaret Mead believed in the power of nurture.
She believed that we are less the product of our cells and genetic codes and more the creation of our families, cultures, and societies.
This week on hidden brain, the surprising advice Margaret Mead gave Eric Erickson and how we draw distinctions between differences and deficiencies.