[Conscious instead of instinctive behavior: efficient replacement of the mother-child relationship in residential nurseries].
When the mother of the human baby must be permanently replaced, a solution must be found which is not based upon the spontaneous behavior of the substitute. The nurse-child relationship in any residential nursery, efficiently replacing the mother-child relationship, differs from that relation in its essential characteristics. The origins, motivation and the elements composing the relationship are different, as well as its future. Any demand on the nurse to assume an attitude similar to the instinctive maternal one is false and dangerous. While intensifying the personal characteristics of care, the nurse should always keep in mind that it is not her own child she is rearing. In spite of her devotion, feelings and affectionate exchanges with the child, she must consciously remain in line with her profession. While showing warmth to all the children in her guard, the residential nursery nurse must control her attachment to prevent the children from becoming objects of her unlimited and uncontrolled emotions. The results of catamnestic studies on former pupils of the Loczy Institute in Budapest seem to prove that the institutional model used protects the child from serious deficiencies, insures good development and organization of the personality and gives him a good basis for relationships with other people.