Law and equity are of little weight, where force is supreme. Relationships that evolve over the years cannot suddenly be disrupted or destroyed without leaving the person physically changed. It is not an issue that finds support only among the foggy-eyed romanticists, but is also a proposal supported by modern physics. We do not live in a solitary or purely objective World, nor can we live in isolation…we must either learn to live together or increase our chances of dying prematurely. Early attachment patterns create the inner maps that chart our relationships throughout life, not only in terms of what we expect from others, but also in terms of how much comfort and pleasure we can experience in their presence. I doubt people would feel safe and open in a community if his earliest experiences had been frozen faces, liars, physical attacks and slander, and hostile glances.  

Our relationship maps are implicit, etched into the emotional brain and not reversible simply by understanding ow they were created. What cannot be communicated, if you cannot tolerate what you know or feel what you feel, the only option is denial and dissociation. Maybe the most devastating long-term effect of this shutdown is not feeling real inside. When you do not feel real nothing matters, which makes it impossible to protect yourself from danger. Or you may resort to extremes in an effort to feel something—even cutting yourself with a razor blade or getting into fistfights with strangers. And yet, the growth in interpersonal chaos is having at least one beneficial effect. It is leading increasing numbers of scientists to understand why a purely objective approach toward human relationships is doomed to failure. Paradoxically, this message is coming from where you would least expect it. 

It is not generally coming from psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologist, anthropologist, or even theologians. Rather it is coming from physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and molecular geneticists, for the most basic disciplines are beginning to acknowledge openly that love is neither an object nor a thing. Recall the bright joyful eyes with which your child beams upon you when you bring him a new toy, and then let the physicist tell you in reality nothing emerges from these eyes; in reality their only objectively detectable function is continually to be hit by and to receive light quanta. In reality! A strange reality! Something seems to me missing in it.  However, this realization may help you to start exploring other ways to connect in relationships—both for your own sake and in order not to pass on an insecure attachment to your own children. 

Dissociation is learned early: Later abuse or other traumas did not account for dissociative symptoms in young adults. Abuse and trauma accounted for many other problems, but not for chronic dissociation or aggression against self. The critical underlying issue was that these patients did not know how to feel safe. Lack of safety within the early caregiving relationship led to an impaired sense of inner reality, excessive clinging, and self-damaging behavior: Poverty, single parenthood, or maternal psychiatric symptoms did not predict these symptoms. This does not imply that child abuse is irrelevant, but that the quality of early caregiving is critically important in preventing mental health problems, independent of other trauma. For that reason, treatment need to address not only the imprints of specific traumatic events but also the consequences of not having been mirrored, attuned to, and given consistent care and affection: dissociation and the loss of self-regulation. Though angels smile, shall not devils laugh! Every virtue is often made the instrument of effecting the most atrocious purpose of this all-subduing tyrant, love.  

Being in synch with oneself and with others requires the integration of our body-based senses—vision, hearing, touch, and balance. If this did not happen in infancy and early childhood, there is an increased chance of later sensory integration problems (to which trauma and neglect are by no means the only pathways). Being in synch means resonating through sounds and movements that connect, which are embedded in the daily sensory rhythms of cooking and cleaning, going to bed, and waking up. Being in synch may mean sharing funny faces and hugs, expressing delight or disapproval at the right moments, tossing balls back and forth, or singing together. All of these foster a sense of attunement and communal pleasure. Take care not to laugh, when there is nothing to laugh at. The arm of the law reaches far, and though its movements are sometimes slow, they are not the less certain.