Indeed, many researchers and clinicians feel that the maternal-child attachment provides the working framework for all subsequent relationships that the child will develop.  A solid and healthy attachment with a primary care giver appears to be associated with a high probability of healthy relationships with others while poor attachment with the mother or primary caregiver appears to be associated with a host of emotional and behavioral problems later in life. We certainly do not see our adorable newborn as growing up and becoming a school yard bully and we certainly do not envision him or her to acquire a gun and shoot his schoolmates.  So why do some children have…

The capacity and desire to form emotional relationships is related to the organization and functioning of specific part of the human brain.  Just as the brain allows us to see, smell, taste, think, talk, and move, it is the organ that allows us to love-or not to love.  The systems   in the human brain that allow us to form and maintain emotional relationships develop during infancy and the first years of life.  Experiences during this early vulnerable period of life are critical to shaping the capacity to form intimate and emotionally healthy relationships.  Empathy caring, sharing inhibition of aggression, capacity to love and a host of other characteristics of a…