Why is Early Love So Important?

The first easy answer is that you can never get it back; it is gone forever. And one day when you feel empty and lonely, and “down”, and missing something, you may know where it came from.

Remember there is critical period for all of our key functions; once gone it is history, and then we play make-up, trying to compensate for it.  Starving in the womb?  A big eater later on. Not eating for today but for when you were starving because that starving is now an imprint, deeply embedded in the brain.

Not touched as an infant becomes insatiable sex later on; again, trying to make up for the past deprivation.  It becomes insatiable and uncontrollable because being held at the start of life, right after birth is life-giving, survival and the key to normalcy.  We need to make up for that lack so that saturyisis is an attempt at being normal.  
We are trying to get our past back, a past that should have been normal—fulfilling children’s needs.  Alas, it was not.  So we act out symbolically; we need to be touched now!  And often: we cannot get enough. Remember, we are trying to fill up deprivation.  Get our childhood back.

And if we all look at our neurotic behavior, our obsessive act-outs, we will find what was missing in history.  Do we eat too much?  Take painkillers?  Hey that means you have pain.  I have an idea: let’s try to find out where it comes from instead of just trying to get rid of it by pushing it down.  “Out of sight very much in the mind."

You get mad when your husband won’t help you? Your parents also did not.    You are frustrated because the wife does not listen?  Guess what was missing.

Worse, once married the husband’s wife becomes his mother; his property.  He can become dangerous and stalk her.  She must now obey and do all of his bidding.  He is living in his past; in his deprivation, and cannot get out of it.  And she is obliged to live out his past with him.  Otherwise, his fury knows little bounds.

That is the essence of neurosis; living in the present as if it were the past.  No longer able to distinguish the past from the present.  This is what I see all of the time; and this is the primordial cause of divorce.  Unfulfilled need acted out on a partner.  They can’t get along?  Look for the need instead counseling each of them to try harder.

It is that past that drives obsession and compulsion because the combination of past and present is often overwhelming.

Just an aside about not making up for the past:  many studies show the long-lasting effects of early deprivation.  Michael Meaney’s work in Canada, in particular.  One study by Eric Nestler, Friedman from the Brain Institute in New York, reported that when rat pups were deprived of licking early in their lives, they were later vulnerable to stress and were easily damaged.  They had less curiosity and were less adventurous.  Those rat pups who were given lots of love were quite different when they grew up.  They were much more nurturing, whereas those who were deprived were much less loving.  And that lasted.

We see confirmation of this need for love everywhere we look.  It gives us a foundation, and without it we are weaker, sicker, lead shorter lives.  We are more apt to become both depressed and/or anxious as adults.  Shouldn’t all this “proof” say something to therapists?  We need to examine that foundation and see how strong or weak it was. We need to ask the right questions and look in the right places and at the right time in history.  I should not have to bang on about it.