When a newborn is kept warm and dry and full by a loving mother, he feels happy within himself. His innermost soul is being fed and its first meals are the most important. When these things are not so, the seeds of discontentment are planted and will remain forever.
When a newborn is moved and stroked and gently jostled around, his earliest memories are filled with interesting sensations, comfortable stimuli. Life outside the womb is interesting, stimulating -- it is a happy place. But when he is left in a still crib with a hard bottle, his first permanent impressions of the outside are dull and unhappy. He may not think about things, or distinguish between inside and outside, but neural connections are being made. In a sense, he is learning that his world is dead.
When a baby sees his mother, smells her, feels her, hears her heart beat, his earliest memories of outside are secure and happy. When his mother is not there, he learns that the outside offers nothing, he is alone.
A baby fed when hungry, changed when wet, and attended to learns that his wants are met and needn't be feared. The abandoned child lives in fear of his needs.
Parents of this culture vacillate from abuse and neglect one the one hand, to guilt ridden overindulgence on the other. We have all seen the confused parent say no repeatedly, then relent under pressure. We have seen parents strike out in frustration one moment, then try to amend with candy the next. Parents without the ballast of innate self understanding are driven by the wind.
As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. The earliest bendings are the most pervasive, effect all subsequent memories.
When I have misplaced my hammer, I wonder from room to room with no recollection of its use. When I find the hammer however, I suddenly remember how it got there. There is great contrast between what I can recall at any moment as an act of will, and what is in fact stored away up there somewhere. Events from forty years ago can be recalled by imagining the place, the smell, a spoken phrase. Somewhere ingrained in that neural maze is everything, my life from before birth, and with those memories is the programming of my personality. When I use a screw driver, I don't recall my first struggling lessons as a child. I feel confident, but I don't remember the first proud moment when I felt just like Dad. The source of my competence, and the accompanying emotion are programmed in there. Most of the memories that inspire me, that enable me to function, will never be brought out to consciousness for review or conversation. Most are too far back, but they are what make me who I am.
In therapy, Neurosis comes not from trauma, but from the suppression of the memory of the trauma. To remember is to get well. In the same way, our stress comes not from the differences between two sides, but from the intolerant battle between the two. The intellect has become hostile, it has taken control. The emotions retaliate on the inside, and we are made helpless.
In the wild, mothers recognized their children's signs, they came when the children cried. As the children grew, they would wander away from mother, they would endanger themselves for excitement, they would meet the challenges. They would overcome and gain strength and their mothers would not think to interfere. The mothers and the children lived according to rules from within and those rules were perfectly suited for the task.