Verified by 
Monthly Newsletter
This month we start a new look at child development, with specific focus on feelings (affects), language, and cognition.
Revolution
“In the future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation… of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.”
– Charles Darwin (1859/1923, Volume II, p. 304)
................................................................................................................................................
Origins
“We labor under a sort of superstition that the child has nothing to learn during the first five years of its life. On the contrary the fact is that the child never learns [afterwards] what it does in its first five years.”
– Ghandi, 1925 (p. 204)
What could be more important than how we develop as human beings? What are the internal and external influences? How do we turn out? What are our character structures? How are our interests encouraged or not?
My thesis is that we are in the midst of a revolution of our understanding of origins and development. I suggest that advances in our knowledge of feelings (affects), language, and cognition have created this revolution. I also suggest that these three pillars—feelings, language, and cognition—need to be examined in integrated fashion… And, when looked at together, a tremendous opportunity exists for enhancing human development.
Under the Radar
This revolution seems to be largely unrecognized. Yes, there are some occasional popular TV programs and books which highlight how smart babies are or how important our emotional world is. However, the potential of this revolution tends not to be appreciated and utilized. Why is this revolution flying under the radar? This may be due especially to two factors.
First, we human beings tend to focus on behaviors rather than on the feelings which cause our behaviors. It seems easier to deal with visible actions—behaviors—than the motivations which cause the actions. Behaviors are caused by feelings which are processed by reason… and our reasoning too is influenced by feelings. Neurologically, as we will see, the amygdala (feelings) and the cerebral cortex (processing reasoning) are both involved in our behaviors.
Second, we continue to have a tendency to dismiss the significance of our early years in the formation of our personality. We still overlook the opportunity in the early years to enhance potential and prevent problems. There is now a huge literature documenting the effectiveness of early intervention programs involved with at-risk children and parents.
Origins are important. Origins count. If we appreciate the embryology of our feelings, language, and cognition—we have a much better chance of understanding what goes wrong and fixing it.
As a child analyst, I am thrilled when I can work with a troubled youngster of 3 or 4 years old. It takes much less time to get development back on track at that age rather than waiting until the 20’s or 30’s or 40’s, when a lot of water has gone over the dam. Let me give you another example. My father was a physician, a surgeon specializing in bronchology (air passages) and esophagology (food passage). He did pioneering work on congenital malformations of the air and food passages. He noted that if one understood the embryology, how these structures were formed, one had a much better chance of being able to fix the problems. Origins are important. Origins count. If we appreciate the embryology of our feelings, language, and cognition—we have a much better chance of both enhancing development as well as understanding what goes wrong and fixing it.
Myths
The revolution in development can also be seen as dispelling various myths. The overarching myth? That the earliest years and childhood are relatively insignificant and have little to do with our overall development and outcome. Yet over and over, advances in neuroscience, molecular biology, and the psychological/behavioral sciences have documented the benefits of an enhancing caretaking environment—and the liabilities of toxic stress in early years, which can disrupt the development of the brain and other biological systems, leading to poor psychological and intellectual outcomes (e.g. see Lane, 2015; Subic-Wrana, in press; Shonkoff JP, Spotlight, 2013).
There are also myths involving each of the three pillars of the revolution:
Feelings – Infants and very young children do not have feelings; they cannot socialize or interact effectively with their environment; and these early interactions have little to do with the child’s ultimate character structure.
Language – Language is not an important factor in children’s emotional or cognitive development until they are able to speak at around 1-3 years.
Cognition – Infants and young children are not particularly smart; their play has little meaning. They are rather disorganized organisms which primarily eat and sleep and poop until about 1-3 years old.
Integrating Feelings, Language, and Cognition
“Hence it is no small matter whether one habit or another is inculcated in us from early childhood; on the contrary, it makes considerable difference, or, rather, all the difference.”
– Artistotle, Nicomachean Ethics
................................................................................................................................................
Feelings, language, and cognition are profoundly impacted during the first few years of life. Many of the neurological patterns of our brain are established in the early years. This is not to say they cannot be changed – that’s what psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, work with parents, medications, and so on are all about, as Noble Laureate Erik Kandel has shown.
Kandel worked with small, multicelled organisms, and he found that the cellular structure changed with alterations in the environment. His work has progressed to the point that we can see changes in brain structures and pathways following psychotherapy and medications.
In discussing feelings, language, and cognition, we want to take an integrated approach and explore them together. It is the integration of these three aspects of development which helps us to see the potential benefits of this revolution. Behaviors are motivated. The motivators are feelings. Feelings cause behaviors. Feelings in conjunction with reasoned thought, self-awareness, and verbalization allow for excellent tension-regulation and interpersonal skills. Daniel Goleman wrote a wonderful book titled Emotional Intelligence, which highlights the importance of interpersonal skills and the connection between feelings and cognition.
As Silvan Tomkins commented:
“… what we ordinarily think of as motivation is not a readily identifiable internal organization resident in any single mechanism but is rather a very crude, loose, approximate conceptual net we throw over the human being as she or he lives in her or his social habitat” (1981).
If we want to get development off on the right foot—and benefit from these powerful assets—we need to understand feelings, language, and cognition, and we need to understand them at their earliest points.
Affects, language, and cognition are at the center of human motivation. Many insightful motivational systems have been articulated over the years, from philosophical, psychological, and neurobiological perspectives (e.g. Tomkins, 1991; Basch, 1988; Lichtenberg, 1988; Gedo, 2005; Panksepp and Biven, 2012).
Language can be a tremendous asset. It makes possible the communication of ideas, feelings, hopes, and dreams. Language also allows the brain to label – put words to – feelings, ideas, and visceral reactions, which enhances internal awareness, tension regulation, and self-soothing. But language can cause mischief as well. The same word can mean different things to different people. And words can sometimes act to distance oneself from one’s authentic self and feelings.
Feelings, language, and cognition are the building blocks of development. They are also the building blocks of change. They are what we as therapists use to enable children and adults understand themselves, change, actualize their potential, and achieve their goals.
Feelings seem to underlie most of this, including language and cognition. Internal conflicts and confusion about feelings can easily derail the benefits of language and cognition. The benefits of early learning—the so-called cognitive hypothesis—can be rendered useless if the child’s emotional life is in upheaval.
We want to explore the origins, the early years, of feelings, language, and cognition. If we want to get development off on the right foot—and benefit from these powerful assets—we need to understand feelings, language, and cognition, and we need to understand them at their earliest points. Then we can begin to see what we might do differently in order to prevent problems and enhance potential.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR INTERESTED READERS
Aristotle (Sachs J, 2002). Nicomachean Ethics. Newbury, MA: Focus Publishers, R. Pullins.
Basch MF (1988). Understanding Psychotherapy: The Science Behind the Art. New York: Basic Books.
Darwin C (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Two Volumes in One. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1923.
Gedo JE (2005). Psychoanalysis as Biological Science: A Comprehensive Theory. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ghandi MK (1925). An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957.
Goleman D (1985). Emotional Intelligence. New York, NY: Bantam Dell Books.
Lane R et al. (2015). Affective agnosia: Expansion of the alexithymia construct and a new opportunity to integrate and extend Freud's legacy. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 55: 594-611.
Lichtenberg J (1988). A theory of motivational-functional systems as psychic structure. Journal American Psychoanalytic Association 365: 57-72.
Panksepp J, Biven L (2012). The Archaeology of the Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions. New York: W.W. Norton.
Shonkoff JP (2013). Strengthening adult capacities to improve child outcomes: A new strategy for reducing intergenerational poverty. Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, April 22, 2013.
Subic-Wrana C et al. (in press). Affective change in psychodynamic psychotherapy: Theoretical models and clinical approaches to changing emotions. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy.
Tomkins SS (1981). The quest for primary motives: Biography and autobiography of an idea. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 41: 306-329.
Tomkins SS (1991). Affect Imagery Consciousness (Volume III): The Negative Affects: Anger and Fear. New York: Springer.
Recommended Book of the Month
The Psychoanalytic Model of the Mind
Elizabeth L. Auchincloss (2015)
Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing
This is a wonderful summary of the development of understanding our internal world from a psychodynamic perspective. Auchincloss discusses in detail the topographic and structural models, object relations theory, and self psychology. She presents their differences and similarities and highlights areas of integration. For example:
Development
A unified psychoanalytic model of the mind has a developmental point of view, because no part of the mind can be understood apart from its history. This history will always include the story of childhood and will feature caretakers and family members, as well as sentinel events, both happy and sad. Clinicians working with a unified psychoanalytic model understand that the mind of the child lives on in the adult.
Theory of Psychopathology and Therapeutic Action (Treatment)
Clinicians working with a unified psychoanalytic model of the mind examine every patient from each of the above points of view, with an eye to understanding his or her psychopathology. Although this is not a book about psychopathology and/or psychodynamic treatment, psychodynamic clinicians working with different models of the mind have much in common. Psychodynamic treatment strategies may differ, but they share a commitment to understanding the patient’s story, told to the therapist with as much candor as possible. Exploration of how the story is told will always be part of the therapeutic work, and exploration of the transference experience is always part of the process. Every treatment seeks to understand the patient’s way of finding pleasure, managing aggression, negotiating attachments and separations, and expressing the self. Every treatment seeks to understand the feelings and fears associated with all of these aspects of the patient’s mental life and the compromises forged among competing aims. This understanding will be shared with the patient so that he or she can find better ways to handle the challenges of being human” (p. 251).
Readers interested in similar work exploring various clinical and theoretical models might appreciate:
Pine F (1990). Drive, Ego, Object, & Self: A Synthesis for Clinical Work. New York: Basic Books.
Pine does a fine a fine job of highlighting the different kinds of questions and perspectives each model addresses.
About Dr. Paul Holinger
Dr. Holinger is the former Dean of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and a founder of the Center for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy. His focus is on infant and child development. Dr. Holinger is also the author of the acclaimed book What Babies Say Before They Can Talk.
