A Mother's Love

What is attachment? It is an emotional bond and connection to another person. One of the most important and formative bonds we will ever have is with our mothers.

The central theme of attachment theory is that mothers who are available and responsive to their infant's needs establish a sense of security. The infant knows that the caregiver is dependable, which creates a secure base for the child to then explore the world. Excerpted from http://psychology.about.com/od/loveandattraction/a/attachment01.htm

Characteristics of Attachment

• Safe Haven: When the child feels threatened or afraid, he or she can return to the caregiver for comfort and soothing.
• Secure Base: The caregiver provides a secure and dependable base for the child to explore the world.
• Proximity Maintenance: The child strives to stay near the caregiver, thus keeping the child safe.
• Separation Distress: When separated from the caregiver, the child will become upset and distressed.

As Dr John Diamond, states:

“The more loved we feel, the higher our Life Energy and the more truly healthy we become. This inability to feel loved relates at an unconscious level to all our relationships, but that with our mothers is the most important. The mother-child relationship is the fundamental human relationship: She was our whole world when we were young, and she is, in a metaphorical sense, our whole world now. It is our lack of belief in her ever-constant love, her pure maternal instinct that is the root cause of our anguish—the universal anguish of the human condition. This feeling of ever-constant love, I have termed Belovedness.

While Belovedness is the feeling of feeling loved, Cantillation is the response to this feeling – life as a song of love for her love. In a sense, Cantillation is simply a state of very high Life Energy, but it has a specific psychological connection with the mother. Cantillation, therefore, is the ultimate goal of therapy, that which lies underneath the more superficial symptom relief”.