From a child to a (un)happy adult

Treating man as an element of something bigger gives a new perspective to growing up and personality building theories. To present this, let’s start from scratch, by changing human and attachment conceptions:

1. We need to cease human individuality. See human primarily as a part of the human community, element of a greater whole or one cell in big, strange and beautiful organism. I don’t deny that human can act as an independent individual, it’s an important but secondary feature.

2. Parent – child attachment is NOT a way to build a robust self image, leading to strong self-confidence, solid sense of self and independence. Parent – child attachment is a way to build a robust sense of Integration with the human community, leading to strong self-confidence, solid sense of self and independence – when you have whole world supporting you, then you can be really self-confident. Sustained traumas, abandonment or rejections during Integration process leads to isolation which is a foundation of severe mental problems in adulthood.

The process

The Integration structures in the brain (depicted as ring shape) are already there when we are born. During childhood thanks to loving parents, they will be filled and organized. If everything goes fine child will become fully integrated part of the human World. See the process on this simple drawing.

Healthy upbringing stages

1. Little child. Integration with the World is quite fresh. Some internal Integration structures were already built thanks to parental love, but the parents themselves are the main means of child-word Integration. Integration is mostly externalized. By externalized, I mean that child use external means (the parents) to feel integrated, cannot do it alone.
2. An older child. The Integration went far ahead. There are more solid internal Integration structures, but not yet fully finished. Parents are still means of Integration but in lesser degree. In addition to parents also other people (peers, family) contribute to the process. Integration is partly internalized and partly externalized.
3. End of childhood. Parents did their job well. Soon to be an adult is now fully integrated. He feels as a part of the World. This solid foundation („whole world stands by me”) gives him strong self-confidence and empathy toward other people. Integration structures in his brain are full of various and sophisticated integration strategies – it’s not something easy to break even by major live misfortunes and betrayals. Integration is fully internalized now.

Note: Integration structures are sub-conscious and sub-emotional. They are the foundation on which relationship part of our emotional life will flourish. Love, guilt, sadness, awe and happiness and many more will start mostly from here.

Unhealthy upbringing

Abandonment, insensitivity, rejections, abuse and other traumas (called later together as “rejection”) can disrupt the Integration process. The process will stop completely with painful feelings of isolation. In other words: in such dire condition child’s mind will assume that integration is not possible and will abandon the integration process. This is the beginning of mental problems, mainly personality disorders.

Need for integration is one of the most basic human needs, we are born to be part of the World, inability to fulfill this need is a disaster very close to annihilation.

Whatever was already built into brain’s Integration structures will stay there, but its quality will be very low, leading to immature, unhappy adult, having very simple and corrupted emotional reactions toward other and poor relationship strategies.