Being Nurtured By Nature, Psychodynamically Speaking
Mary Oliver May Vol 3: The habit of relational devotion and how it feeds us.
A primary way modern, progressive psychoanalysts frame how therapy works is through the term “corrective emotional experience.” Though this phrase came from a paper from 19461, it has stuck around in the evolution of analytic and dynamic thinking as convergent fields in behavioral health have discovered related findings. Attachment theory—the theoretical and empirical study of how early infant-caregiver attunement impact longitudinal relational and intrapersonal wellbeing—also has its roots in the 1940s, with John Bowlby beginning as an analyst and then being ousted for his ideas that would later be welcomed into the analytic world decades later2. Attachment work—by Bowlby and his empirical, behaviorist co-scientist, Mary Ainsworth—would evolve to emphasize the idea that a parent’s response in infancy, repeated over and over, would lead to and “internal working model” of the world and of getting emotional and physiologic needs met. While Bowlby and Ainsworth continued beyond infancy, the early infancy and childhood periods of development were seen as crucial, and born out later in related areas of study, especially in regards to both the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study3 and, on a positive note, the Positive Childhood Experiences Study4.
I know what you’re thinking right now, “What the hell does this have to do with Mary Oliver May and WHERE are my journal prompts???” We are getting there, I promise. Let me finish cooking though.