Pit of despair The pit of despair was a name used by American
comparative psychologist Harry Harlow for a device he designed,
technically called a vertical chamber apparatus, that he used in
experiments on rhesus macaque monkeys at the University of
Wisconsin–Madison in the 1970s. The aim of the research was to
produce an animal model of clinical depression. Researcher
Stephen Suomi described the device as "little more than a
stainless-steel trough with sides that sloped to a rounded
bottom": A 3/8 in. wire mesh floor 1 in. above the bottom of the
chamber allowed waste material to drop through the drain and out
of holes drilled in the stainless-steel. The chamber was
equipped with a food box and a water-bottle holder, and was
covered with a pyramid top [removed in the accompanying
photograph], designed to discourage incarcerated subjects from
hanging from the upper part of the chamber. Harlow had already
placed newly born monkeys in isolation chambers for up to one
year. With the pit of despair, he placed mon