ABSTRACT
So, if psychology is really about the understanding of ouremotional world and its needs, of how their dynamic balancestands at the basis of our survival and of the quality of our existence, we must conclude that it is an unknown science for most people. Everybody knows at least something about mathematics, sciences, languages, and history, but nothing is known about our emotional needs, about the need to securely attach and to be our own self. This, despite the existence of over a century of psychological literature whose development and results are now undisputed. This state of things, I believe, is also due to the fact that when we speak of emotional needs, we think of something natural and instinctive, which in theory is or should be true; however, we forget that in today’s world the social and economic organisation within which we live, and which has primed our emotional responses and meaning-making, is far from any naturalness. Indeed, it seems designed more to ignore and repress it than to foster the expression of our natural makeup. Part of the responsibility clearly rests with the so-called experts who tend to limit their discussions to a closed circle of insiders, neglecting any attempts at effectively communicating to the world in accessible terms the fundamental elements of our findings. These, on the contrary, I believe
should be available to everyone so that they may become a collective tool for living better, besides psychology’s own (and crucial) contribution towards social improvement and progress. Even more unfathomable is the number of those who have no notion of evolutionary psychology or of the extraordinary discoveries in the more recent field of neurobiology, which confirm human beings’ absolute necessity for relatedness. This is especially pertinent in childhood, when the need for secure and trustworthy emotional and capacitating references is paramount.
