Allan Schore writes that the self-organisation of the developing brain occurs in relationship with another brain. This relational environment can be growth-facilitating or growth inhibiting. It is this environment that imprints into the early developing right-brain either resilience or vulnerability to later developing psychiatric disorders. Borderline personality disorder, PTSD, and antisocial personality disorders are associated with early traumatic attachments that are ‘burnt into’ the right-brain. This impairs the regulatory capacities to cope effectively with stressors throughout the lifespan. Developmental science has shown the amazing plasticity and responsiveness of the developing brain to early enriched environments.
How adults ‘see’ infants determines how we treat infants. How much do we understand about the baby’s structural development, capacities and potentialities? Our individual and cultural filters may bias us towards providing suboptimal experiences for infants.
Emotional security comes from the implicit knowledge that during times of stress, we can cope. This comes either through autoregulation (alone) or interactive regulation (with others). This adaptive ability is established in the first three years of life, as a result of our attachments.
The earliest stages of life are critical because they contain within them our possible futures. When and where shall we place our resources in order to optimise the well-being of human societies and future health? The measure of how much we value our early beginnings can be measured in the money we put into social programmes that support young children and families. Early prevention programmes have an impact not just on infancy but the health of the individual and community across the entire lifespan. These programmes can not just alter the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology but also optimise emotional security and hence health and well-being throughout the lifespan.