ABSTRACT
Trust is the wellspring from which all human attachment emerges. With trust come all the joys and challenges of human interrelatedness and interdependency. For the development of each person, for the development of relationships, and for the development of cultures and societies, trust is a necessity. As Daniel Stern pointed out, the interaction between infant and caretaker involves both self regulation and sensitivity to the state of the other. Theorizing about the development of trust in toddlerhood and later childhood, particularly from the psychodynamic/psychoanalytic point of view, has been minimal and much of the discussion in the psychological literature comes from experimental studies. During latency, or middle childhood, children's understanding of trust undergoes significant change, which may be related to increased experience, cognitive development, increasing sophistication of theory of mind, and superego development. With extreme psychic trauma and repeated anaclitic betrayals, malignant mistrust develops in a child.
