How Minds Are Built Out of Love

When we think of the origins of a good mind, we tend to think of the education system. Harvard or Yale. An extensive library. Great teachers.

But arguably, the really important facilitating factor in the creation of a nimble, curious, emotional mind is present much earlier, and in a different context: the ongoing presence – across childhood – of a loving other mind.

It may be very hard for anyone to develop a forthright, active mind who was not loved carefully in childhood. The legacy of having been ignored, of having been constantly terrified, of having been cowed into submission by volatile caregivers, of having been ridiculed for one’s concerns and mocked for one’s being may be a particular deadness of mind: a preternaturally arrested lack of original spirit, an eerie stillness. Other people may, on encountering such a person, complain of a sense that they aren’t quite there; they may be very ‘nice’. They don’t quite feel ‘real’.

How love shapes the mind

Being inwardly ‘alive’ is a gift – the outcome of a relationship. It is because someone paid us a lot of attention. Someone was interested in our thoughts. They mirrored our feelings. They validated what we said. And so we grew able to be independently excited, to follow our ideas, to look at matters from multiple viewpoints, to stay true to our own impressions, to be original, and to be properly kind and empathetic, rather than ritualistically polite.

It isn’t that the deprived can have no access to the intellect. They may turn out to be fantastic mathematicians and great engineers. But what they are unlikely to be is agile around the exploration of emotional life. They may find it extremely hard to analyse themselves; they won’t be able to explore their own feelings (there is too much sadness, fear and loss); they will resort to primitive defences when handling conflict (it has to be someone else’s fault; apology is impossible because the price of admission was too high in childhood). Furthermore, because they were alone in crucial years, they will have started to think in solitary ways, practitioners of what is termed one-person thinking. Their sense of humour may be deeply singular. They may struggle to enter anyone else’s experience. They can’t imagine that there is another point of view (because early on, that other point of view was so relentlessly cruel and alien). 

When intelligence develops without emotional agility

Nowadays, psychologists may be tempted to attach all manner of lengthy acronyms to the phenomenon. Pills are prescribed. But what is more likely to be true is that all this is downstream from an original deficit of love. The sufferer can’t think straight because they weren’t loved straight. They can’t concentrate because no one concentrated on them. They can’t hold thoughts sequentially because they weren’t held adequately.

There is a deep sadness in all of this. Those who have grown up in emotionally deprived circumstances suffer an extraordinarily cruel fate: their own minds have not developed as they should. Yet if we understand how love shapes the mind, we must believe that the process can, with sufficient tenderness, at least partly be redeemed. We may be able to hold these people emotionally and give them the security to finally open the hatch and walk inside themselves. We may give them the approval they need not to be scared of their own intuitions. We may be able to return them to their true selves. 

But that all depends on a crucial final factor: that they will let us. That they can be well enough to allow us to help them to get better.