What does infant research say about how “I” was born.

A wide range of infant researchers have the last 30 years given us much more insight in these relations. They have shown how the infant’s psychological universe emerge as a consequence of the quality of the relations. Daniel Stern (1985, 1995.1998) in America, Colin Trevarthen (1998)in Britain, the Hungarian Fonagy(2001), and the American duo, Beebe & Lachmann (2002) are some of these most prominent scientists.

The I, and me, cannot emerge without a relation with you.

No doubt the relation between mother and child is of basic importance. Nine months of sharing the same body cannot be underestimated. By the time the infant is born it has listened to her heartbeats, breath, moved with her, heard her voice, even father’s voice, if he has been present. It has had billions of sensations and ups and downs together with her. As a consequence, the human child is no blank sheet or tabula rasa when it’s born.

If then mother has been abandoned, or had to flee from a war zone, – familial or political, the child’s body and nervous system will know it, without yet knowing it consciously.

Through vast amounts of video recordings of mother-child, and mother-father-child relations, this infant research has also put the spotlight on relations and care conditions predisposing developmental disorders.https://youtu.be/T4Pyu-61N2g

The infant has an inbred capacity for dialogue, and is normally very social.

Trevarthen and Tronics studies found that the infant has an inherent capacity from birth to “enter into a dialogue with its surroundings.” The child’s early ability to mimic and mirror the caregiver’s behavior was detected in many of these studies. From the infant’s side this preverbal dialogue, or “proto conversation” was first without words, in the sense of symbolic language. Instead the “dialogue” was saturated with facial expressions, head, body and arm movements, similar the gestures in a verbal conversation. Gradually also simple words and phrases joined into this interactional pattern.

The quality of the maternal relation

In these studies, it was proven that the quality of the maternal dialogue with the child was decisive for whether the child maintained contact with her, turned away, or started to cry.https://youtu.be/Btg9PiT0sZg

As the infant grew the observations also revealed the development of a recognizable parallel pattern of communication between mother and child. A pattern that seemed to repeat itself from out of the first typical prototype, only just more elaborated.

This relational pattern was understood as a precursor of the child’s later more established social behavior. It was also understood as a result of the way the child was treated in the primary mother-child-father relationship.

Infant studies have given psychological treatment new methods

Such infant research has ever since fueled psychodynamic relational psychology and relational psychoanalysis with basic empirical knowledge. It has given confirmation, and input to relational theory of treatment. This has been the case both for the methods in individual psychotherapy, and in couples and family therapy.

The way you have been treated by your parents, seems very much to affect the way your treat your own child. It also of course, influence the way you think and feel about yourself and other people. You may for sure know differently, but in the act of child rearing you evolve your own history of being raised in a relation, almost automatically.

No wonder that earlier, both people in general and older genetic researchers believed that this behavioral pattern was mostly determined by family genes. Nowadays studies have shown otherwise. The human infant and child’s conception of it’s “self” and it’s identity is mainly determined by the way he or she is met by it’s caretakers.

The conclusion seems very clear:

When the extremely significant treatment by parents has not been based on true recognition of the child as it is, the child’s Self, will derail.

If the child is met with skepticism, and not acceptance, with scolding and disparagement and not by positive encouragement, with threatening and frightening and not by security and comfort giving, the child will develop a worthless “me” conceived as “bad”.

Psychologically this may be denied however, in the child and adolescent. Instead the “invulnerable” but false “super me” may arise, with lots of behavioral and psychic problems.

Usually however, child rearing is a positive, active and very giving process. The infant and child’s alert perceptiveness and presence in the relation is mind blowing and inviting. It is important to remind ourselves that the parents are always responsible for handling the feelings that occur in the process. They are also responsible for moving the interaction and “dialogue” with the child, in the right direction. That is making the child feel accepted for his or her contribution to the interaction.

Making the baby and later the  toddler, to feel itself understood, included, respected and wanted. Then the child’s “me” will be conceived as “ok” or “good enough”, even better “highly appreciated”. Then the child’s self will not unconsciously have to survive by inflating an insecure self-confidence, into unrealistic proportions. Or by some kind of withdrawal from the social world, based on anxiety or fear of rejection and renewed disappointment.

A child without boundaries is a helpless child

Through millions of different types of interactions, and through verbal labeling of objects and events in this process, the child will gradually be able to speak a simple language. And by observing and sensing the difference between himself, mother, father and others in the family or community the child will soon experience a stronger sense of self. By being stopped gently but firmly, not by condemning the child when it demands more than can be achieved or delivered, the child will also gradually sense its limitations and boundaries. A child without boundaries is a helpless child ridden by the tyranny of his impulses and the moment.

Don’t  yield to every demand that is not necessary.

It’s ok that the child shows greed, but it’s not ok constantly to yield to such demands and cravings. Here, accepting overtly the child’s feelings and urges as they appear, without yielding to them, is a winner. A child that always is gratified by parents afraid of disappointing or hurting the child, or parents with too much vulnerability for tears, this child will most likely never be satisfied.

 Contrary to the “American credo”

Urge and greed must contrary to the American credo, not just be satisfied. Then it will most likely grow to endless proportions, and make no one happy. In other words, parents must learn the child to mourn losses or disappointments. That’s the only way to grow as a person and be satisfied with what one has. It is also the only way to start reflections inside the child’s brain, on what another person might feel, or think, or might do if the child does not accept limits.

The capacity for being social at the start of the infant’s life seems to be inborn in humans and chimps. But the effect of how we as grown-ups deal with our children, is what distinguishes an insecure stressed child from a child with a good sense of self, and “me”, and with a strong and conscious “I”.

 

 

Genes as text in different contexts.

NEW PERSPECTIVES

It is the interaction between Psychology and Genes that has changed our way of perceiving genetic inheritance. The last twenty years of research on genes has given us that valuable information.

Here “The Genome Project” has aimed to identify all the genes in our human genetic material, while “Encode” wanted to clarify how this genetic material worked in practice. The main result is in my view strikingly similar to the findings from research on infants. In other words: That there is an ongoing and continuous interaction between internal and external conditions.

This continuous interaction, affects both the internal structures in the DNA and the organization of the surrounding environment

I may illustrate the situation by comparing the child’s original genes as an advanced but unfinished text.

The environment that the child is offered through its family at birth, is like a publishing house. The conditions the publishing editors of the DNA text has to offer, is detrimental of the text’s success as a published manuscript. If the editors initially, reads the “text on the child’s own terms, the relation starts well.

A publishing house (family) that is trying hard to understand what the child’s text(DNA) conveys, based on the child’s behavior, have good editors. If the editors are also allowed to accommodate their way of editing the manuscript, the Publishing House(family) they belong to, is in this context a very good House.

From this perspective of a text/context relation, the newborn in a sense represent the first volume in a relatively unedited, and only barely begun developmental novel.

Encodes’s Approach

Using more than 400 researchers and over 1,600 experiments “Encode” mapped where and how the editing occurred. They mapped when and how, what I call “wiping of the text” occurred, and when and how the “text was highlighted”. According to the researchers’ own terminology, they found out which sites of DNA that act as switches for genes.

Genes are turned on and off

They also found out where and how a gene is turned on and off, and thereby amplifies or dampens the genes impact on the body. It is quite obvious that modern genetics largely revolves around understanding how the translation of genetic message occurs at various levels and through various forms of language. That it is about translating chemical language codes into biological conditions, and that this occurs through the use of chemical messengers that select building materials.

These materials are such as proteins and amino acids, used to form body parts, according to what is written in the DNA text. But it is also clear that modern genetics is about translation and editing in the opposite direction of movement. For the first time in history epigenetic research shows us that there is also a translation, or chemical writing down of the emotional climate surrounding the organism that is formed.

Thus, “linguistically mediated message in the familial context”, could be translated into chemical compounds, and affect how the impaired genetic text is read.    This occurs in a form of reorganization or editing process of the original text, through deletions or highlighting of the message. In a way, both the nonverbal action language and verbal language of symbols in the individual’s relationships, are inscribed as a kind of correction or proofreading of the DNA in the nucleus. Not only physically adverse environmental conditions will create unfortunate translations of genetic text.

Also psychological environmental conditions will greatly affect how the genetic text is perceived. Researchers Jirtle, Skinner and Sweatt, found that the epigenetic processes that control the development of the central nervous system, were particularly heavily influenced by individual psychosocial experiences. This was in special true with the limbic system and hippocampus, which plays a crucial role for the individuals learning ability and memory.

No genes for psychological disorders

Fosse (2009)has summarized the new genetic research as follows: “This means that we now at the cellular level begin to get a picture of how genes and environment interact, and in this picture environment seems to have a far greater impact than previously thought.”

Fosse here refers to the DNA studies of Maher, Sanders and co-workers, Talkowski, Baumne, Mansour and Nimgaonkar. Their research could not provide any support for the existence of genes that predisposed to psychiatric disorders. Instead it proved that the different processes that took place in the genetic material in the cell nucleus, was governed by processes that lay outside the genetic material in DNA. 

A caring environment most important.

These non-genetic processes proved to have the greatest impact on the following four areas:

1. Brain Development, including the individual’s neuropsychological functions.

2. Body metabolism and stress response system.

3. The immune system.

And last but not least:

4. The development of emotional life.

Caring is the most important environmental factor.Top of the list of factors was the quality of maternal care. Maternal care had the most considerable influence on the genetic expression. Absence of early care / maternal care or negative care, led to a steep increase in the activation of the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands. Together forming the HPA system.

This resulted in a kind off massive secretion of stress hormones, including cortisol. Moreover, the brain’s sensitivity to various chemicals decreased or were zeroed out.  In rats, the urge to explore the surroundings was strongly inhibited. The animals were very often frightened and disturbed in what they were doing.

The research showed that the quality of care that the infant receives from the mother, controls the development of the brain and behavior. This happens by altering the epigenetic processes that control the genetic expression of the DNA!   

In people with depression changes in HPA function (see above) is the most well-documented research findings in biological psychiatry. Also when it comes to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia changes in HPA system, i.e. the body’s stress system are considerable. 

Trauma and abuse.

Fosse notes that child abuse seems to follow some families for generations. He refers to studies at Chapman & Scott, and Widom where it was proven that nearly 70% of parents who are perpetrators, have experienced abuse in childhood. Of these, in about 20-30% of the children even expel abuse behavior as parents. This agrees with my own clinical experience.

Mechanisms of “generation transmission” has recently been examined thoroughly in rhesus macaques monkeys. This has been done by taking children from their biological parents at birth, and place them with surrogate mothers.

Studies show that children of abusing mothers, do not become perpetrators towards their own children when they grow up with non-abusing adoptive mothers. But the studies also show the opposite: Children of non-abusing biological mothers, develop abuse behavior towards their own children, when they are brought up by an abusing adoptive mother.

Thus, according to these comprehensive studies, environmental heritage proves to be more important than genetic inheritance. Stress in a relationship with the parents get a decisive influence on the development of both physical and psychological problems and disorders. Moreover, it seems to be a logical connection between the degree of stress and the severity of a subsequent psychological disorder.

Can the child inherit the mother’s or father’s depression or ADHD?

The results of the above research disprove the genetic determinism that everything is primarily derived from genetic text. The results also disprove that it makes sense to talk about a 50/50 ratio between genes and environment. In a broader perspective however, it confirms the basic conception of the world as an unbreakable network of relationships.(see Psych Universe front page)

In this network of relations, the distinctions between internal and external, dependent vs. independent, innate vs. learned, heritage vs. environment are somewhat artificial. They are in some way construed, and primarily created by our desire to comprehend the complexity. It is a human quality related to our possession of language to break up the world in parts in order to identify and understand it.

The consequences of this division can still be that we forget that there is nothing in this world that exists independently of the relationship it has to it’s surroundings. This basic knowledge will apply all the way from the action of a quark and boson, on the nuclear level, up to the relationship between a child’s genetic predisposition and the quality of care from it’s parents, relatives and community.

Our communities main task for children

Based on the knowledge we now have about the function and operation of the genes the community’s main task must be to secure the genetic child a positive basic relationship. From a developmental perspective, this means to secure the child as little relational stress as possible. To achieve this, we need to create a relationship that provide security and predictability, together with ample room for personal expression, and age-appropriate limits set by the environment.

It must, as we have seen from infant research, be developed a “dialogue with the child”, which gets makes the child able to express itself in the best way. In addition the care must enable the child to understand more of itself, and it’s surroundings.  In the author/publisher metaphor, “the child must both be read as correct as possible”, and ” edited ” so respectfully and clearly as possible.

Then the genetic text of the infant will get the best starting point to develop it’s potential as a “supporting text”. This scenario is most likely to happen in an editorial context that is not only able to see the text, but also grabs this potential and laboriously helps it forward to publication as a valuable chapter in an ongoing several-volume novel.

This is the fourth article following Genes and Psychology 1,2 and 3

Se also for the psychological basis of this view in the two articles:

http://www.selvuniverset.com/2016/07/25/how-do-i-become-me/

• http://www.selvuniverset.com/2016/07/26/how-i-was-born-with-you-me-and-the-others/

Literature:

(Reference literature will be available as soon as my website accept the list)