Janie Loubser writes about the thoughts that are provoked by
Sue Gerhardt’s book Why Love Matters
Why
Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain
by Sue Gerhardt
264pp, Routledge
by Sue Gerhardt
264pp, Routledge
Available on www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1583918175/
Why Love Matters is
the title of a book I recently read. It is written by Sue Gerhardt and she
explores how the earliest relationships shape the baby’s nervous system. As
psychologists and counsellors we know that childhood experiences have a great
affect on adult life. We are familiar with John Bowlby’s attachment theory and
Margaret Ainsworth’s “Strange Situation”
study that showed how a child’s development is a direct result of the way the
child's main carer responded to and engaged with him or her. Yet it seems that attachment theory has
almost been forgotten or is being downplayed. The whole issue of mothering has
become sensitive and even politicised. Sue Gerhardt however goes and uses
neuroscience to prove the attachment theory. She provides the scientific
explanation for the importance of early experiences. She is very honest about
how parents fail their babies and what the consequences can be. But she also
describes a mother’s experience of being with her baby with sensitivity and
provides insight into why a mother is limited in the way she mothers. She goes
further and gives a rich description of psychological disorders such as
depression and borderline personality disorder. I say it’s rich because she
helps the reader imagine the baby’s experience that possibly contributed to the
disorder. She makes it clear that she
believes that prevention is key and that early intervention with mothers and
babies are much more effective. But she also explains how psychotherapy with
adults can help to repair some of the damage.
This quote summarizes Gerhardt’s viewpoint: “The human baby
is the most socially influenced creature on earth, open to learning what his
own emotions are and how to manage them. This means that our earliest
experiences as babies have much more relevance to our adult selves that many of
us realise. It is as babies that we first feel and learn what to do with our
feelings, when we start to organise our experience in a way that will affect
our later behaviour and thinking capacities.”
The book is divided into three parts. I am going to present
some of the key ideas from this book that I have found helpful in my work.
The first part of
the book deals with brain development in infants and how this can be influenced
by attachments and the corrosive influence of cortisol. Gerhardt sets out the
scientific basis for understanding babyhood as a crucial time in emotional
development. She uses the concept of “the unfinished baby” and explains that
the baby has many systems that are incomplete and will only develop in response
to other human input. Babies also rely on adults to manage their emotional
states so that discomfort and distress are reduced and comfort and contentment
is increased. If a baby is exposed for
too long or too often to stressful situations (such as being left to cry) its
brain becomes flooded with cortisol and it will then either over- or
under-produce cortisol whenever the child is exposed to stress. Too much is
linked to depression and fearfulness; too little to emotional detachment and
aggression.
The second part of the book looks in more detail at the
links between various adult disorders and their roots in babyhood. Gerhardt
highlights the concept that insecure attachments and the consequences can make one
more vulnerable to specific psychopathologies. She does not say that the one
‘causes’ the other, but explains how poorly developed emotional systems impair
one’s capacity to manage one’s feelings
. The likelihood of finding dysfunctional solutions to emotional problems are
increased, such as eating too much or too little, drinking too much alcohol,
reacting to others without thinking, failing to have empathy for others,
falling ill, making unreasonable emotional demands, become depressed, attack
others physically, and so on. Gerhardt
looks at the links between early emotional regulation and the immune system,
depression, as well as personality disorders. Her description of the baby’s
experience that developed into a borderline personality is a helpful reminder
of the baby within the adult. In fact she says, “whether you focus on the
parent, the baby or the adult with the mental health difficulties, the core
problem remains the same: the insecure baby within.” Insecure attachments tend to develop because
parents find it hard to respond adequately to their babies. This is mostly
because of their own limitations in regulating their emotions.
Gerhardt writes about
an emotional framework that is set up and consists of both a physiological and
psychological capacity. If the framework
is secure, it gives the individual a confidence in regulating the ups and downs
of emotional life, with the help of others when needed. But if the framework is
insecure, then the person will find it much harder to cope effectively with
stress, and will feel little confidence either in coping as an individual or in
relying on others to help. She describes self-esteem as the confidence in
oneself as well as in others and says that self-esteem is not just thinking
well of oneself in the abstract, but also having the capacity to respond to
life’s challenges.
Part three looks at treatment and repairing the damage.
Gerhardt acknowledges that this information can leave one feeling heavy with
guilt about the parenting one provided and hopeless about the parenting one
received. Gerhardt argues that improving the relationship between parents and
their babies is a much more cost-effective way to improve mental health than
any number of adult therapeutic interventions. She advocates parent-infant
psychotherapy as one way to prevent damaging emotional patterns from repeating
themselves.
She does however acknowledge the possibility of development
and change extending across a lifetime and not just infancy. She explains that
important pathways continue to be established through childhood until the brain
is fully fledged at 15 years old. Change and development do continue after that,
but as we know from our own work, at a much slower rate. She explains how
through psychotherapy an individual can explore the way that he or she
regulates himself or herself in relation to others, and can attempt to modify
old emotional habits and introduce new ones. She writes, “the therapist’s
acceptance allow a mental space to reflect on the feelings and consider how to
respond afresh. Whilst the feelings are alive and active, so too are the stress
hormones which will assist new (higher brain) cortical synapses to be made in
response to the subcortical signals. Together with the therapist, new networks
can be developed.”
We can probably all relate to how difficult it is to talk
about early experiences. Adults cannot remember their babyhoods even though
they have feelings about it. And mothers find it hard to express their intense
emotional and physical experience with their babies. Gerhardt’s writing does not only provoke
thoughts and feelings about early childhood experiences, but provides a
language to talk about it. It is accessible to not only those involved in
mental health, but to parents too. The
book can help create awareness in parents about how much their babies need
them. It can also be helpful for adults
in explaining why they have the difficulties they have. It has helped me to
teach parents how to respond to their babies; and to teach adults how to respond
to the baby inside them in an empathic way.
-
Janie Loubser is a clinical psychologist in
private practice, Cape Town. She has a special interest in relationships and helps
people to discover and remove the obstacles that keep them from having meaningful
relationships. This includes relationships between parents and children. www.janieloubser.co.za
No comments:
Post a Comment