In a supervision session, Dr. Ralph Klein, M.D., Clinical Director of the Masterson Institute, told me, “We are creatures of relationship.” Based on what I had been taught in grad school, it seemed that every client I was working with needed to be disentangled from the relationships they were in. Ralph had a different view. He told me about a video taken in a Romanian orphanage where children had little human contact. An infant, not yet able to crawl, worked its way across a rug until it reached a stained spot. Hungry for relationship in some form, the infant put its cheek on it.

Psychology has not always recognized our need for relationship. But, in the 1960s, Harry Harlow's experiments with monkeys proved the importance of relationship. theorist John Bowlby showed infants are programmed to seek relationship.

Pediatrician-turned- Donald Winnicott introduced the relational terms "holding environment" and "transitional object." In The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment (1965 p. 39), Winnicott writes, “I once said: ‘There is no such thing as an infant,' meaning of course, that whenever one finds an infant one finds maternal care, and without maternal care there would be no infant.”

This quote is frequently used to point out that Winnicott appreciated the psychological importance of relationship. Actually, the statement was about physical survival. A statement about the psychological importance of relationship followed in which Winnicott asserted independence is based on “the maternal ego implementing the infant ego and so making it powerful and stable.”

How does this happen? According to theorists Peter Fonagy and Anthony Bateman, “Infants are constitutionally primed to expect to find a version of their internal states mirrored by their caregivers.” The child needs to find, in the mind of its , a recognizable version of itself. The child internalizes what it finds in the caregiver's mind as its sense of self. Thus, depending on the accuracy of the caregiver's mirroring, the child internalizes a true self, or a false self.

Security also depends on relationship. The child needs to sense that the caregiver holds the child in mind even when absent. Knowing it is never “out of sight, out of mind" remains important to us as adults. I've found that anxious fliers are calmed by knowing a friend is tracking their flight on a computer.

The importance of relationship is clear in a new book by Kennedy Odede, Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss and Hope in an Africana Slum. Though his mother died when he was young, she remained real to him and gave him strength. Odede writes, “When I was on the streets as a child I thought of what my mom had told me, that no matter where I was in the world, if I could see the stars I should know that she could see them, too, and I felt her love always.”

Caregivers teach children there is "light at the end of the tunnel." Odede wrote, “I grew to know that no situation lasts forever. I used to tell myself that even when the day felt dark, eventually the light would somehow come. Nothing is constant.”

He and his wife now provide light at the end of the tunnel for many children. They founded a school for girls and a community organization called “Shining Hope for Communities,” or SHOFCO. Odede says, “I think starting SHOFCO also gave me a sense of . . . feeling connected to a universal humanity.”

Where the book is sold on Amazon, Chelsea Clinton, Gloria Steinem, Mia Farrow, and Senator Cory Booker have commented about being inspired by him. Inspiration is important. It can motivate. But, emotional strength is essential if what one is inspired to do is to be carried out. Odede's inspiring accomplishments were possible due to emotional strength given him by his mother. Emotional strength is a gift of relationship. It is the gift captured by E. E. Cummings when he wrote, “i carry your heart with me(carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you . . . .”

In my view, the most important discovery in the last one-hundred years of psychology is Stephen Porges' research showing how emotional strength develops. Completely outside of awareness, we humans send and receive signals that, if benign, stimulate the . When stimulated, the vagus calms us. It slows the heart and activates the parasympathetic . If the signals indicated physical safety, some calming results. But, if the signals indicate psychological safety as well - attunement and non-judgment - profound calming takes place.

Porges calls this unconsciously produced override of stress the "vagal brake." When pressing solidly on a car's brake pedal, even if the accelerator is pressed to send more fuel into the engine, the car goes nowhere. Likewise, the presence of an attuned, , and non-judgmental person applies the vagal break. In spite of stress, we are calmed.

Try it yourself. First, remember that in most social situations we are competitive, critical, or judgmental. Even advice-giving is a form of one upmanship. It may not be easy to find, but hopefully you can bring to mind a moment with a friend when there was no and no judgment at all. As you recall the person's presence, do you notice your guard being let down? If so, you are experiencing the vagal break in action.

The fortunate child has many such moments with caregivers. In a situation, the caregiver's calming presence becomes associated with the stressful situation. Then, at later times of stress, even when alone, the caregiver's internalized presence activates the vagal brake and calms. In my work with fearful fliers, I've found the vagal brake can control feelings of in-flight and .

Porges' discovery explains how the benevolent non-judgmental signals of the caregiver can calm the child. If consistent enough, calming relatedness is internalized, allowing us humans to engage in , reproduction, and - indeed - civilization.

= = = = = = = =

What follows is added because I ran across an article by Martha Straus, Ph.D. on teaching out of control kids how to by being - herself - regulated.

Instead of "time outs," she practices "time in." She writes, "when we’re reactive to an escalating child or , we feed the fire. When we find ways to stay calmly attuned and connected, we help quench it."

Time Out: "all the cognitive emphasis on teaching self-soothing and problem-solving skills miss the point. Time Out often doesn’t work: the problem persists, the

behavior resumes."

Time In: "for a child to develop, parents need to 'loan' the infant—and then the child, the adolescent, and the emerging adult—their adult regulatory system . . . an adult who really shows up—self-aware, engaged, and compassionate. For me, and for most people I know, these vital qualities aren’t automatic: they have to be developed and practiced."

Her article is at https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/article/81/getting-unhooked