Why Love Matters

Why does love matter?

Because without it, life would not be worth living. Without it, we would be less than human. And without its irreplaceable influence in our earliest years, our brains would not develop to their full potential. We could not become fully functioning three-brained beings if we had not been loved as infants.

Psychologist Sue Gerhardt's book, "Why Love Matters," now in its second edition, is of the greatest interest to anyone who cares about human development, personal psychology, abnormal psychology and personality theory. This surely includes everyone reading this blog, and I can't recommend it too highly.

We all know now that the personality of the baby is formed by a complex and delicate process of interaction between the genetic endowment of the child - in Work terms, the Essence with which she is born - and the environment in which she lives. In the world of the tiny baby, the influence of the mother is paramount, and that intimate relationship has the greatest effect of all on what kind of person her baby will become.

Will the child grow to be a secure, well-loved adult, someone capable of loving and empathizing with others? Or will she become an addict, a narcissist, an anxious, obsessive-compulsive sufferer or even a psychopath?

We bring our own special and unique DNA into the world. This is most often a less-than-perfect inheritance; for example, you may have genes that could predispose you to alcohol or opiate addiction, to overeating, or to aggression. But whether or not those genes eventually hold sway over your adult personality depends to a very great extent on the type of mothering you received in the first two years of your life.

Nothing new, you may think. After all, John Bowlby, Melanie Klein, Erich Fromm and many others have written on the various stages of child development and described how the family influences the type of personality, and of course to us in the Work, the false personality, that the child will eventually acquire.

You would be wrong, however, for in this book what Gerhardt does is to actually describe - with diagrams - the effects that different types of mother-baby relationships have on the brain's formation. And this is something new and infinitely valuable for our understanding of how personalities - and, of course, false personalities - come into existence.

As an example, if a loving, empathic relationship is not present for the baby at the very earliest age, that child's orbitofrontal complex does not develop as it should. This part of the brain is responsible for the ability to delay gratification, to manage feelings and to participate in relationships. Early deprivation means that the baby may never fully achieve these abilities. If the opportunity is missed in infancy, the growing child, even if adopted into a loving family, may forever be robbed of his full potential.

Even in pregnancy, stress experienced by the mother can shape the developing brain of her unborn child, influencing the volume of the hippocampus or the amygdala. Some babies are born already stressed, and the mother may experience the baby's crying and refusal to feed as a rejection of her, and then may emotionally withdraw further from her child.

It is the quality and strength of the parents' love, particularly that of the mother, which enables the brain to develop normally. Mothers who are under stress, whether through being a single parent without the support of a partner or family, or through low income or poor housing, or in an abusive relationship, are often unable to show their baby the quality of love that is necessary for proper development. There is good news, however, for with professional help, especially if this help is given at a very early stage, the mother and baby bond may be repaired sufficiently so that the child can develop normally.

Much depends on the ability of the mother (or the primary caregiver, if this is not the biological mother) to understand and manage her own feelings, and in particular to be able to tolerate uncomfortable feelings and relationships without letting them affect her behaviour towards her child.

The ways that children develop will follow certain patterns, which are of course also dependent on the genetic makeup of the child.

Some children may respond to their mother's discomfort by learning to hold back their own feelings, denying them sufficiently that the adults around them may see them as calm, unconcerned children with whom all is well. Underneath, however, many children are a filled with alarming, painful feelings which they know will only distress their caregivers; such children put on a false mask of "OK-ness" which does not reflect their true states. To those of us in the Work, we may see this as one basic characteristic of what will become that child's false personality. It seems that the beginnings of false personality, though not its full-blown manifestations, can arise at a much earlier age than was previously believed.

Some children may become hyper-sensitive to the state of their parents' emotions, so that they learn to read them with an almost psychic attunement. In reality, they have learned very early on to pick up signals from the adults which show when they are most likely to be attentive to the child. The child then times their own demands so that they will get maximum attention, but at the cost of repressing the child's pain. Such behaviour has been observed in many adult children of alcoholics, though this is not the only environment which can elicit it. Any disorganized pattern of parental care may be the trigger for this type of psychological hyper-awareness. It may even seem to be an asset - "What a wonderfully sensitive child!", people may exclaim - yet it is not, because it eventually traps the adult into a pattern of codependence.

Yet other children become extremely emotional, over-vocalizing and over-dramatizing constantly, because they have learned that unless they do so their needs will be overlooked. Quite often these children grow up to be "borderline" patients, who have enormous difficulty in regulating their own feelings. Internally, they feel as though they are on a constant roller-coaster of emotions which threaten to overwhelm their already very fragile sense of self. They can no longer distinguish between "real" hurt and artificially exaggerated feelings, and they may be known as the drama queens (or kings!) of their families.

Psychotherapy later in life can help enormously in bringing calm and stability, as we all know. But such therapy is painful. To learn to re-programme our feelings, we have to re-experience them in all their complexity, so that we can then "do differently". Such therapy is vital if adults who have experienced very difficult childhoods are to be able to lead organized, fruitful lives, or as we say in the Work, to become Good Householders.

And babies do not have to be subjected to cruelty to undergo the sort of brain changes which Gerhardt describes. Sometimes, the mother is simply unavailable, even when physically present, because she is not at ease with the baby's feelings and does not know how to soothe them. Some mothers have to leave the baby with caregivers to go out to work, and they may not be aware of the way those caregivers actually treat the baby when she herself is not there. Perhaps the caregivers are simply interested in earning money and care little for the child's needs.  Gerhardt points out, however, that a patient, loving caregiver can be just as good as, if not better than, the mother herself; what matters is the quality of the care that is given, rather than who is giving it, a fact which should reassure many working mothers.

Fortunately, as stated above, much damage can be repaired if the adult is able to go into therapy. Without such help, however, the outlook can be bleak. Later, in an attempt to lull emotional pain, the adult who was an unhappy, emotionally neglected baby may take to alcohol or opiates. Again, the genetic predisposition will influence which escape route seems easiest or most effective.

Of particular interest to Work students is the new understanding that the brain works best when both emotions and instincts are operating harmoniously together. The ability to achieve this harmony depends wholly on our early life experiences. When this state is present, the rational faculty is also able to function at its best.

"The brain constructs representations of internal bodily states," Gerhardt says, "links them to other stored representations, and then signals back to the body in a process of internal feedback, which may then trigger off further bodily feelings in a cyclical process".

We may call these "stored representations" different I's. This is why, in the Work, we strive to be conscious in all centres, for many I's are stored in each centre, and will influence us without our awareness unless we are trained to observe ourselves. We cannot truly understand ourselves and observe our various I's unless we are conscious in our moving/instinctive centre, our emotional centre and our intellectual centre.

 All three centres may either work together productively, as is our aim, or may, as is often the reality, hinder each other because of repressed and unconscious I's that interfere with the centres' efficiency.

Gerhardt's book is too long and too complex to be easily summarized, but I hope I have given you a sufficient taste of it to make you interested in reading her work for yourself. Many counsellors and psychologists have read the first edition as part of their coursework, but in 2015 a new edition was published which incorporates new research in genetics and mental development.

The book is: "Why Love Matters" by Sue Gerhardt - ISBN 978-0-415-87053-5
Publisher: Routledge
2nd edition 2015