Peter Hobson

Robert Peter Hobson ( born November 23, 1949) is a psychiatrist. He is Professor of Psychopathology at University College London. He is known for his work on autism and developmental psychology. His research led him to new conclusions regarding the origin of consciousness.

Performance

Core of his work is that the human mind is the result of a successful series of interactions between child and caregiver. Hobson's research is based on principles that were created by Colwyn Trevarthen from the mid- 1970s. Trevarthen identified distinct steps in the pre-verbal infant development, the so-called primary and secondary intersubjectivity. They additionally provide the developing mind of the child with an architectural design that is necessary for the attainment of symbolic thinking.

Hobson finished his conclusions by verified cases in which children had no possibility of intersubjective relations, whether from genetic or environmental reasons. Hobson achieved without the knowledge ethically questionable experiments. He examined children with autism, Down syndrome, congenital blindness and extreme social deprivation. He used statistically relevant numbers of children who were rescued from Nicolae Ceausescu's Romanian orphanages for the latter. All impediments to the normal interaction between child and caregiver in the way, were carefully examined.

Hobson's arguments challenge sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, by introducing the concept of the human mind back to a recording device for social interactions, without the consciousness would be impossible in the human sense. On the other hand Hobson, that a firm emotional attachment for a child and the process of intersubjective learning is crucial. The experience that emotions can be triggered by other and other people was identified as the material from which the sense of self, others, objects and symbols are produced.

The theses are of growing interest for the philosophy of mind and related disciplines. Edward Skidelsky points out that Hobson fatally overlooks the fact that even people with autism learn to talk. Others understand Hobson as an indictment of the parents of autistic children what he has expressly rejected.

Writings

• Robert Peter Hobson: How do we learn to think: brain development and the role of emotions. Publisher Walter, Dusseldorf 2003, ISBN 3530421685