My Tenets
All therapeutic work is grounded in perinatal psychology
A fascinating hypothesis that I support is that the very evolution of our species may have been driven by the challenge posed to nature by the evolutionary move from oviparuous (egg-based) to viviparous (womb-based) reproduction and the subsequent need to protect the attachment relationship between mother and potentially very vulnerable offsprings (Taylor, 2014; Tadolini, 2017). Marked by a specific constellation of attitudes and capacities rooted in neuroendocrine responses, the biologically encoded care paradigm, drawn by nature to serve the purpose of protecting the growing foetus inside the mother's womb and later the long external gestation that marks our species, could be said to be at the centre of any work that proclaims to be therapeutic.
Acknowledging the "irreducible needs of children" (Brazelton, 2009) - be them present or the children we have been when we were little - is the foundation of a therapeutic framework centred on leaning on the biological paradigm of care, to foster healing and growth. An understanding of biologically-encoded affective needs, rooted in the experience of uterine life, for connection and space, leads us to the acknowledgement that it is by following their guidance – with emotions acting as a compass – that nature has designed a pathway fostering our species’s survival. Shadowing the very properties of the relationship a foetus experiences in the womb - a life-long imprinting - in the course of development in fact the need to be connected to others (connection, resonance, attachment, attunement, support, belonging, sameness) and the need to be our own selves in our own right (space, freedom, diversity, boundaries, self determination) do not change in their essence, but only in form, and mark the makings of wellbeing from infancy to old age.
The counterpart of biologically encoded emotional needs is the biologically encoded care paradigm, which is supported by a specific pattern of hormones and neurotransmitters. This was probably initially evolutionary designed to protect the foetus from the mothers’ immune system, but later brought the added advantage of informing the mothers’ ability to meet the baby’s needs for connection and space after birth. This is a requirement particularly crucial for our species, as brain development happens mostly in the first 1000 days after childbirth, where the relationship to mother acts as an external incubator informing the child’s future capacity to autonomously regulate their emotional needs.
But the care paradigm is not confined to childbirth or mothers: over the course of evolution our species extended it to all healthy relationships, within the Self and between people, to foster and protect the wellbeing of society as a whole. Thereby the care paradigm is not only potentially active in females but in all human beings. Our ability to cooperate and connect, to befriend and protect, to empathise and resonate, stood at the very root of our evolutionary advantage, rather than our strength, aggression or allegedly superior intellect.
My task, in working with adults, is reaching the little parts within. And putting them in contact with the client's own capacity to activate the care paradigm and look after them with respect and warmth, so that they may exit the past, become secure and grow.
All therapeutic work is grounded on an understanding of our unicity and multiplicity
Western culture has the specificity of having emerged with the notion of the Individual - a concept we now take for granted and which is deeply engrained in our way of making sense of ourself and the world.
It is important to notice, however, that the notion of the individual we hold is not only relative, but also a construct that has precise historical and relational origins and that it is far from "the Truth". First of all, it stemmed from a deeply traumatised society that has historically thrived on violence, submission and control. Secondly it arose from an anthropocentric worldview that made its habit to study inert objects in a vacuum. Thirdly, it anxiously defends the notion of a will-defined and monadistic entity that has no corroborating evidence in the observation of how human beings, and biology in general, work. Finally, it is based on an abstract idea of a white male in his prime, having Western culture completely disavowed the child and the woman keeping them well outside the domain of what is worthy of consideration, speculation and later scientific enquiry.
We now know that the Self is not an inborn, unitary characteristic we're endowed with. Each and everyone of us evolves starting from the maternal womb and through multiplicitous “relational incubators” (the mother baby dyad, the paternal constellation, the school environment, relationships with peers, romantic attachments, the world of work and society in general), where every relationship and crucial experience contributes to shaping who we are, bringing some of our own unique potential to life or shredding it. Moreover, every phase of our development, which is not linear but proceeds through discreet stages marked by specific configurations of experience and meaning-making, remains inside ourselves operating like a little member of a community or internal family. I often use the metaphor of trees, where each concentrical layer marks a year lived, to describe how within ourselves our 1 year old self, our 5 year old self, our 16 year old self, and so on, are still alive and operating, sometimes silently sometimes taking the lead. To complicate the picture further, every meaningful relationship that has shaped and nurtured us, also still lives inside ourselves in internal dynamics between parts.
When all is well, the person is integrated and can acknowledge and cherish the contribution of each part to the present moment and is capable of securely relating within the Self as well as with others. When things go wrong however, we find compartmentalisation, splitting, repression and dissociation, and people suffer profoundly trying to protect themselves from threats that are no longer present; moreover, developmental trauma leaves behind exiled parts which are stuck at a phase of emotional development and still in need of affective responses of care that did not come when they should have.
All therapeutic work is traumatology
We tend to think of trauma as a single event, something extraordinary and intensely overwhelming that leaves a profound mark. That is true, but there's another kind of trauma, a more subtle and pervasive one, that arises when emotional needs for connection and space (often in the form of respect, which in turns safeguards a sense of integrity) are thwarted on a systematic basis. The state of being consistently unmet in an attachment relationship can result in trauma even for grownups, however it especially affects us if we're children. This is for two reasons: first of all because childhood is a time when our nascent Self is very much in the making and therefore fragile. And secondly because it is during this time that the foundations of our internal dynamics, which will then shape how we relate to ourselves and others for the rest of our lives, are laid. Things that to an adult eye may seem trivial, may puncture and wound a child's nascent and fragile self in deep ways.
Moreover, instead of helping us avoid trauma, our culture often leads us to the wrong. Having historically disavowed our emotional world and the world of relating as a place of sin, shameful dependence and vulnerability, Western culture has in fact taught us unwritten rules that in the name of helping our children grow strong and pure, are practically based on the systematic breach of connection and respect (integrity). Despite the explicit overcoming of the old authoritarian attitudes based on control, obedience and abstinence, these attitudes still constitute an unconscious colonisation and I would say that everyone in the present day has suffered from greater or smaller breaches of their innate expectancies for connection and respect.
As with singular trauma, when systematic disruption of our need to connect and to be respected happens, a rupture of the psychic space-time takes place, leaving behind little parts of Self who remain stuck, frozen, in the time of trauma, on an endless repeat.
These parts need the support of a new, secure, relationship to come out and heal, or they'll find every possible way to take us back there, to the time of trauma, talking through symptoms and re-enactments and sometimes immense emotional pain, thwarting our ability to grow, thrive and express our real self in the present.
All therapeutic work involves the social domain
We are a social species. Unlike bears, or tigers, or crocodiles, as lone individuals we lack the strength and defensive apparatus required to survive in the wilderness. We started out as preys, not predators. Let's face it, even my cat would survive better than me a night in the woods.
However, western society has traditionally placed more emphasis on the individual than on the web of relatedness and interdependency that truly ensures our survival.
The discovery of human beings' exquisitely relational nature has actually been a rather recent one in psychology, dating only back to the mid 40s when Bowlby and other psychoanalysts in Britain studied the effect of early separation and loss in a population of children orphaned or evacuated because of the war.
Before that, the consensus - left unchallenged even by Freud, who was far from revolutionary in this regard - was that human nature were essentially self-serving and opportunistic, and only the impact of culture, morality and religion could lead us to restrain our otherwise pleasure-seeking, sexual and aggressive nature.
The world of emotions and feelings has therefore been traditionally seen with suspicion, as if it were the passions that lead us astray, whereas only rationality could instead guide us towards everything that is Good.
When in the XX century psychologists begun to study moral development we actually came upon the discovery that without feelings there would be no right or wrong - something that AI developers struggle with as they try to create a self-driving car for instance. A purely analytical intelligence, great as it may be, cannot discriminate.
What's particularly interesting is the discovery that it is our right brain, the one dominant for feelings and emotions, which is capable of making links and moral choices. The left brain, the "rational" brain cannot. Studies on split brain patients or victims of strokes tell us that the person left only with the "emotional" right brain can survive and function, despite not being able to talk. A person instead left only with the "rational" left brain cannot, as they tend to take decisions that seems very logical (let's say, putting the sofa on fire when it's cold) but lack a consideration of the consequences.
According to Ian McGilchrist's hypothesis (2019), the western world's delirium of omnipotence and overoptimistic trust on the individual and his rationality is very much akin to what can be observed in neurological patients, be it cause by physical damage or functional deficiency. Interestingly we find the same lateralised deficiencies in individuals with early attachment trauma, which bring about the tantalising question, is western society a traumatised society? A society suffering from mental health issues? Certainly, the systematic wish to disavow, divert attention (and scientific enquiry) and deny our emotional and relational nature may remind some of schizoid phenomena, if not worse.
Despite the advances and discoveries in psychology of the last 90 years, the society we inhabit is still very much based on an individualistic delirium and an attack on linking. The western terror of tenderness, dependency, attachment, emotional needs, still imbues the meanings, processes and structures of our society. We receive schizophrenic messages whereby we need to be self-sufficient but able to work in a team, to procreate but abandon our baby into care to go back to productive work ASAP; that we have to have a sparkling social life, but that we have to compete, use others as a mean to an end, and be the best, else we are discarded and left behind in our neo-liberal world marked by the survival of the fittest. We live in a state of policing of negative emotions, where people are constantly required to market themselves on social media as winners, whist living in constant horror comparing one another and finding themselves short. Moreover, our world is still dominated by subtle or sometime less that subtle toxic power differentials: racism, misogyny, unfair opportunities, discrimination, violence, abuse and oppression.
I believe that in any pathway towards wellbeing a consideration must be given to the environment the person lives in, and whether it facilitates or actively hinder health, to empower the individual to discern pain that is caused by internal causes from pain that is caused by environmental violence, which should never be abided. Therapy cannot and should not be a form of anaesthetic or a dissociative fugue into an omnipotent and illusionary space of detachment and immunity to abuse.
Brazelton, T. B., & Greenspan, S. I. (2009). The irreducible needs of children: What every child must have to grow, learn, and flourish. Balance.
McGilchrist, I., & Kleinman, D. (2019). The master and his emissary. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Tadolini, B. (2017). L'evoluzione al femminile: il contributo delle femmine all'evoluzione dell'Homo sapiens. Edizioni Pendragon.
Taylor, S. E. (2014). The tending instinct: Women, men, and the biology of nurturing. Times Books.