1.1 Holding
Aware that prominent psychologists and university laboratories had compelling evidence that the foundations for much adult psychological distress can be found within our earliest experiences in life, I began an in-depth study of developmental psychology and infant research. While studying psychoanalysis at the Masterson Institute, I found myself drawn to the work of Donald W. Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst from the middle of the 20th Century. Through his work as a pediatrician as well as child and adult analyst, Winnicott named the central emotional requirement for emotional health throughout life.
In coining the phrase, holding environment, Winnicott gave voice to every infant's core need: personal access to a primary relationship (one or several) that recognizes 11 the child's absolute dependence and offers sensitive and committed caregiving. Winnicott was unequivocal in his belief that at the heart of this first relationship is the fact that each child requires consistent, predictable, and soothing presence, especially during times of distress. A few years into this new understanding of a holding environment, I studied briefly with infant researcher Daniel Stern. His term for this same core emotional requirement: being-with. To be-with is to experience, what Stern and his colleagues call a moment of meeting.
Moments of meeting. Moments of trust.
Then a new opportunity was offered. Along with my colleagues Bert Powell and Glen Cooper, I was invited to become an attachment researcher under the guidance of Jude Cassidy from the University of Maryland. Based upon the theory and research of her mentors, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, Jude guided and supported our work with high-risk parents and young children. The outcome of that collaboration, known as the Circle of Security, and is now being utilized with parents and children around the globe.
Winnicott, Bowlby, Ainsworth, Stern, and Cassidy have brought clarity regarding the basic emotional needs at the heart of every person on our planet. They have also made clear the cost to each of us when these needs aren't adequately met.
“You see two infants: one has been held (in my extended sense of the word) well enough ... and the other has not had the experience of being held well and growth has had to be distorted and delayed, and some degree of primitive agony has to be carried on into life and living ... The infant who has not had [this holding environment] has either needed to develop premature ego functioning [a self-sufficient, “it’s all up to me” strategy], or there has developed a muddle. — Donald Winnicott, M.D.
Gretchen Minx
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Every life is worthy of a novel. — Erving Polster, Ph.D.
For the first time, the internal chaos of my life (Winnicott called it primitive agony) began to make some sense. For the first time an underlying structure, a deeper coherence within the nature of life, began to emerge into view. The experience of holding is somewhere on a continuum for each of us. Yet, in subjective perception we either have access to a holding environment or we do not. To the degree that we have access to a holding environment, we feel safe and secure. To the degree that we do not have access to this holding, we increasingly experience life as difficult unto impossible.
As I deepened in my study (and corresponding psychotherapy) I realized that I did not have a history that included adequate holding. Attempts had been made by my parents, but these were two people with little clue how to offer soothing presence. These were two people still lost in misguided attempts to find their own holding. From an early age I had "developed [in] a muddle."