- The session is about vulnerability and its importance in human potential
- Vulnerability has been overlooked in today's world, especially by neuroscientists and behavioral theorists
- The session will focus on the impact of vulnerability on the spontaneous unfolding of human potential and maturation processes
- The session will also discuss the increasing flight from vulnerability in children and its implications
- The session will explore the interface between maturation and vulnerability, and the effects of maturation on vulnerability
- The younger and less mature the child, the more vulnerable and easily wounded they are
- Maturation processes can decrease the impact of wounds and increase resilience
- The session will primarily focus on the impact of defense mechanisms on maturation processes

- The brain's defense mechanisms against vulnerability can make it appear that a child is doing better, as they can eat, sleep, and concentrate better.
- Medication can aid these defenses and improve basic functioning, but at what cost?
- Short-term effects may look good, but we need to consider the long-term effects and the potential for human development.
- Children separated from their attachments show high cortisol levels, indicating a defensive mode, but over time, they may appear to improve.
- The desire of development is to become adaptive, emergent, integrative, and realize our potential as separate and social beings.
- Maturation cannot be commanded, willed, or taught, and intelligence does not play a role in it.
- Emotion happens to us and stirs us up, and it is the basic movements in our emotions that lead to maturation.

- Maturation lies in emotions, not just in education or experiences
- Research shows that emotions play a crucial role in brain development
- The key feelings that drive maturation are pivotal and essential
- Society needs to understand the importance of emotions in children's development
- Medication can hinder emotional growth in children
- Emotion was previously disregarded and held in contempt, particularly in women
- Males may be more defended against vulnerability and experience more wounding
- The limbic system is the key part of the brain that drives maturation
- Home-educated students often excel academically because they retain their emotions
- Helping children retain or regain their emotions is crucial for their development
- The engine of maturation is a concept that explains the key elements of development

- The video discusses the importance of certain emotions for the development of human potential.
- The first arm of the maturation process is adaptability, which is driven by feelings of futility, sadness, and disappointment.
- The second arm is emergence, which is driven by feelings of fulfillment and satisfaction of attachment needs.
- The video emphasizes the vulnerability of these emotions and the importance of recognizing and allowing them.
- The video also highlights the importance of tears as a symbol of these emotions and their role in personal growth and transformation.

- In order to feel full, one must first feel empty and hungry
- Many children today struggle to express their emptiness and vulnerability
- The ability to express missing someone or feeling lonely is crucial for fulfillment
- Defended individuals are less likely to express their hunger and vulnerability
- The noise children make is not indicative of their psychological state, it's those who don't make noise that are worse off
- The key to satiation is providing more contact and closeness than is pursued
- The amygdala plays a role in switching from attachment to venturing forth and play
- Children who need to be filled the most are often the least likely to experience it
- Love alone is not enough, it must be felt and requires vulnerability
- A child who can still say "I miss" is a good candidate for love to sink in

- Feeling sadness about things that cannot be changed is necessary for feeling fulfilled by what can work
- The ability to feel fulfilled in a relationship requires the capacity to feel sad about what isn't working
- The Latin words for sadness and satiation are the same, indicating that they are flip sides of the same coin
- Happiness is on the other side of the tears that have not yet been shed
- Grieving and processing loss and lack can lead to emergence of viability and adaptation
- Tears and sadness can lead to being born again and emerging from lack of love
- Integrative processes and conflicting feelings are vulnerable but important for character development.

- Vulnerable feelings are necessary for character development and maturation
- Feelings of woundedness, hurt, anguish, and pain are likely to be defended against
- Along with these vulnerable feelings, other feelings such as fear, caring, guilt, and embarrassment may also be lost
- The brain can either move us to mature or defend us against vulnerability, but it cannot do both simultaneously
- Children who are stuck developmentally are missing the pivotal feelings that would move them to mature
- Sensitivities can be overwhelmed, leading to defenses and a lack of maturation
- The heart symbolizes vulnerability and emotion, and pivotal feelings drive growth processes
- Maturation leads to six traits that cannot be taught and are a mark of a maturing child
- When vulnerable feelings are lost, the infrastructure of maturation disappears
- Holes in children's development can lead to non-compliance, underachievement, disruptive behavior, and learning problems
- Understanding the unfolding of human potential is important to identify what is missing in children's development.

- The session discusses the overlooked importance of vulnerability in human potential.
- It explores the impact of vulnerability on human maturation processes.
- The session highlights the increasing flight from vulnerability in children and its implications.
- It examines the interface between maturation and vulnerability, and the effects of maturation on vulnerability.
- The session focuses on the impact of defense mechanisms on maturation processes.
- It emphasizes the role of emotions in maturation and brain development.
- The video emphasizes the importance of certain emotions for human potential.
- It discusses the key elements of the maturation process, including adaptability and emergence.
- The video highlights the vulnerability of these emotions and the importance of recognizing and allowing them.
- It emphasizes the importance of tears as a symbol of these emotions and their role in personal growth and transformation.
- The ability to express vulnerability and emptiness is crucial for fulfillment.
- The video emphasizes the importance of providing contact and closeness for satiation.
- It highlights the role of the amygdala in attachment and play.
- The video emphasizes the importance of vulnerability and feeling sadness for fulfillment in relationships.
- It discusses the role of grieving and processing loss in emergence and adaptation.
- The video emphasizes the importance of vulnerable feelings for character development and maturation.
- It discusses the potential consequences of lost vulnerable feelings, including non-compliance and learning problems.
- Understanding the unfolding of human potential is important for identifying missing elements in children's development.

This is our second session on vulnerability.

As I said in the last session, we could take many, many sessions on this, on human vulnerability.

It's a subject that is deep, profound, was the theme of depth psychology.

It was the primary discovery of depth psychology.

And somehow it's been eclipsed in today's world.

The neuroscientists usually come to their research with very little understanding of classic literature, and so where they discover the defenses, they don't know the role it plays in the larger scheme of things.

And learning theory, behavioral theory, of course, eclipses this as well.

There's no understanding, and the irrational approach took us away from this understanding.

Absolutely essential to understand human vulnerability and its role in the unfolding of human potential.

At the end of the last session, we looked at the impact on learning and behavior.

But as I alluded to then, and a number of times, The big impact is on that spontaneous unfolding of human potential, the maturation processes.

I want to look at it specifically, to spend a little bit of time on this to understand the implications of this.

And therefore, to appreciate also the impact of what is happening with today's children and youth, especially as indications are quite strong that the flight from vulnerability is increasing for many of our children.

And what the implications of that are, why it is and what effect it has.

So back to our theoretical map, first of all, to pinpoint where we are.

We, again, in discussing maturation, looked at the adaptive, the emergent, and integrative processes.

Now we've added to this the vulnerability part where the theme is defense.

We discussed briefly emotional defense, the backup defense in terms of perceptions, blinding a child to what would make them feel bad, and then also very briefly about the attachment defenses, both a resistance to depend and to reverse the instincts to come close, to make contact, or proximity, defensive detachment.

So these are the attachment defenses that we'll elaborate in later sessions.

So now we're going to look at the interface of maturation and vulnerability.

Very briefly, what are the effects of maturation on vulnerability?

And then the rest of the session on what is the effect of vulnerability and defense, especially a defense against vulnerability on the maturation processes.

First of all, what is the effect of maturation on vulnerability?

This is actually quite obvious, quite self-evident.

And so I didn't actually put any slides on this.

I thought this would be, it's quite intuitive really.

The younger the child, the more inherently vulnerable, the more immature the child, the more inherently vulnerable, the less viable the child, the more dependent, the more easily wounded, the less adaptive the child, the more easily wounded.

These kinds of things are much more intuitive to understand.

For instance, let's take the integrative process.

If a child is capable of mixed feelings, they're much less likely to get their feelings hurt in certain situations.

Braden, towards his seventh birthday, the same birthday that I had mentioned before, where he had anticipatory grief, where he had mixed feelings about something that was very pleasurable for him because he could sense the ending of it, that he couldn't hold on to good experiences.

So his joy was surrounded in a bit of melancholy, which is what happens when you get to integrative functioning.

But also there were other results of this.

I remember in 1 particular situation where I tripped over him, I was quite frustrated, and my words were a little bit harsh, this, and then I realized that I had, that my frustration had come out inappropriately there.

I apologized for this, that it hadn't to do with him, that rather the irritation was something other, but nevertheless I tripped over him, and he said to me, Daddy, it's okay, it's okay.

I can remember now that you love me even when you're mad at me, which is huge.

That integrative functioning, in other words, he didn't get as wounded, he didn't get as hurt because he was able to bring something else to bear.

When you're able to bring your beliefs to bear, your assumptions, other parts of your experience, you can weigh that in.

And so again, the more mature, the less affected by these kinds of wounds, especially when there is something else to be taken into consideration.

You can take context into consideration and so on.

So again, the relationship of maturation, how does maturation affect vulnerability?

I'll give you another example going the other way.

If a child loses his tears, I can remember many examples, many examples where, let's say, a young adolescent, be dealing with a young adolescent who had been date raped.

And within a month or 2 months of this showed huge defense, cutting and burning herself and various other levels of defense, aggression and so on, many indications.

And of course, in this, 1 is likely to pinpoint the particular trauma that happened, the wound that happened, a very significant wound as being the cause of the fact that there was all of this dreadful impact.

And yet on closer examination in many of these cases where there was loss, where there was lack, where there was trauma, I'd go back and I'd say, when did the tears disappear?

And often they had disappeared, the tears had disappeared 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, 6 years previous.

So what happened is because the adaptive process was broken, no resilience was happening, it greatly decreased the ability of the child to bounce back.

So the date rape was part of the answer, but there was a deeper issue is the adaptive process had been broken, the process by which a child would recover from trauma.

And again, it's 1 of the reasons why it's so important to be able to preserve that process.

Those of us that are parents here, to preserve that process, it's so important that a child can find the tears, or at least their sadness about the little things that do not work in their life because we never know when the big things are going to come along.

And it is that process that builds resilience, that gives them bounce back, that enables them to have recovery.

So again, very simply going this 1 way, that the more mature, the more adaptive, the more integrative, the more emergent the child, the less affected by the bumps and bruises in one's world.

The more integrative, the more adaptive, the more viable as a separate being, the more capable of dealing with the bumps and bruises.

But the focus of this session is primarily the other way.

What is the impact of defense on maturation?

What is the impact of emotional armor, of perceptual blindness?

And so I bring back this slide that I showed you in the last session.

I bring back this slide of every human brain is equipped to.

This is not just disorder, this is to make life bearable.

This is when the vulnerability is too much to bear.

This is when the bumps and bruises have got too much.

The purpose of this is to preserve basic functioning.

So when the brain does its work, it actually looks like the child is doing better.

And I alluded to that last session, but again, it looks like the child is doing better.

They can eat better, they can sleep better, they are not such a cry baby, they don't burst into tears at every bump and bruise.

They're not wearing their feelings on their sleeve.

So for all intents and purposes, things are getting better.

If we look situationally, as all research looks now, if we look through the eyes of the medical or the physician, if we look through the eyes of the pediatrician, which is looking for the immediate results, the immediate results, functioning is getting better.

Let me give you an example, and we'll talk about again the attachment very shortly.

And so there was a time in Canada where parents were not allowed to visit their children, their young children in hospital, because it was found that this was incredibly distressing for children.

They'd break into tears and they'd be whining and complaining and full of upset.

And they found that if parents didn't visit them for 3 to 4 days, young children stopped complaining, stopped crying, stopped their upset, and for all intents and purposes they were a lot easier to manage.

This is exactly what attachment theory was based on.

Bowlby was studying this in the hospitals in Britain, this kind of effect of what would happen.

And so the policy was, because they thought that children function better if parents didn't come to visit them, denied parents to do this because the children ate better, they slept better, and if they were doing a task, I'm sure if they were doing measurable tasks, if there was school involved, they could have concentrated better.

This is what is fooling the researchers, it's fooling physicians and everyone because our medication, our pills that we give children, aid and abet the defenses against human vulnerability.

Again, there's not 1 pill that makes you feel more vulnerable.

And if you take more of the medication in terms of attention deficit disorder, whatever it is, it's palpable.

You can sense that it numbs the feelings.

And so we're aiding and abetting the brain's defenses against vulnerability.

It improves the ability to eat and sleep and to concentrate.

Exactly why, and it's why now some pediatricians are recommending that all the children who are experiencing turmoil be given medication to go to school.

I mean just to school so that they can function better, they can focus better, they can concentrate better.

The question of all of this is at what cost?

And unless you have a theory of the unfolding of human potential, you cannot answer this question.

Unless you have a theory that, unless you have some understanding, unless you have some model that you're coming at this with, that actually takes a larger perspective, there is no way of being able to tell the cost.

When a child becomes defended again, they're not so upset, they don't talk about what distresses, their basic functioning improves, Everything looks as if it is better.

If that is not what the purpose is, the purpose is not simply to get our children to be able to function in a wounding environment is to be able to realize their full potential as humans.

So we're running into great difficulties.

By adolescence, we find out that our adolescents are presenting as more immature, less integrated, more impulsive.

The amount of disorders that they qualify for are exploding, and yet we're not putting it together that this is related to how we're treating our younger children.

So this is what we need to explore and that brings us to the issue.

Before I go to that again, I mentioned this in my book about the research.

When young children go outside the context of their attachments to preschool, three-year-olds and so on, go to this.

The cortisol levels, which are always the indication of the brain at defense, cortisol is the direct indication.

When we measure cortisol, we can do that in the saliva, it indicates directly that the brain is in a defensive mode.

This is a wounding environment, this is the stress chemical, this is where it is.

And these cortisol levels shoot sky high in these children when apart from attachments.

Now, after they've been in that environment for a while, it looks as if they improve tremendously, they can deal with that a whole lot better.

Again, they're not nearly as distressed, they don't suffer as it seems that they can eat and sleep better.

Everybody thinks that their functioning has improved.

Research shows us, but again, we have indications that no, this is not right.

We're not taking a look at these children in the context of the long-term.

And it is to become adaptive, emergent, integrative, to realize our potential as separate beings, as social beings, as adaptive beings.

So I'll move to sketching the engine of maturation for you.

This has been the holy grail, so to speak, of the developmental process, the developmental theory.

The question, what, What moves us to mature?

It's quite clear we can't command it and we talked about that before, telling ourselves to grow up or telling anybody else to grow up.

We can get somebody to act more mature in a situation and definitely we can get ourselves to act more mature, but it doesn't stick and it doesn't generalize so we can't teach it we can't command it we cannot will it you know it's not a result of learning and it's in in genetics all genetics does is it sets potentials, it doesn't, it has nothing to do with how we get there, and intelligence is of no help, none whatsoever, all the intelligence in the world doesn't give you any advantage in terms of maturation and a lack of intelligence is not a disadvantage in terms of maturation, it's a completely independent factor.

The big question was, yes, there's a spontaneous unfolding of human potential it is spontaneous So what is spontaneous?

The answer becomes quite clear once you see it.

But it was so dismissed, this answer so dismissed by the theorists, by the rational approach, so dismissed by John Locke, and the whole basis of logical positivism and the blank slate, emotion was so dismissed that it was hard to rediscover that this was indeed the answer.

It happens to us, and there's 2 definitions of emotion, to be stirred up, and so it happens to us, and it moves us.

And so the more we looked at it and studied it we found that all the movements the basic movements to mature are in our emotions This is hugely significant Hugely significant because this does not mean that maturation lies in school This does not mean that maturation lies in making sure children have the right the right Experiences of learning It does not mean that the parent has to teach the child.

It means the child has to have the right feelings.

That's what it means, that the child has to have the right feelings.

Now we've got all kinds of research that comes in to corroborate it.

Like we find out that when a rat mother licks a rat pup in attachment and so on, the equivalent of strong attachment is that the brains grow better.

How does licking lead to having a developed brain?

Well, just like us, when we experience contact and closeness when we experience love and belonging it affects us it affects us the emotions are there and and so there are key feelings that are absolutely pivotal pivotal And the word pivotal here I use carefully or on purpose rather, on purpose as a turning point, turning point feeling.

So what are the turning point feelings how is it that the brain moves us to mature I I chose a particular a engine here with lots of movement you can see Lisa potential for movement I love this picture because it was just was great and of course again the question was is what moves us what moves us to our tears what moves us to resilience what moves us and to to to to benefit from adversity?

What moves us to venture forth, to become our own person?

And the answer, of course, as I said, is emotion.

And in the very definition of emotion, we see the to move is the key here.

And so this is, this still is probably the best kept secret.

If we really got this in our society we wouldn't mess so much with children's emotions.

If we really got this, we'd be careful how we push their buttons.

If we really got this, we'd become aware of when they lose their feelings.

Children can lose their feelings tremendously.

The greatest predictor of adolescent violence is a 3- or 4-year-old, according to research, who no longer can say I'm scared.

Does a child have the full gamut of feelings?

Are this, you know, these are the feelings and what are the feelings to preserve in a child?

And we'd be careful with our medication because all medication for children is basically a straitjacket on emotion.

It's not that we wouldn't recommend it sometimes, because sometimes it's absolutely necessary.

The brain itself sacrifices growth for defense.

So there are appropriate times with children when we sacrifice growth for defense.

But oh my goodness, we should say at what cost.

And we should always feel sad about the ultimate sacrifice play.

When we're sacrificing this, there is a sacrifice here.

There is a cost for this and so we should be concerned about this.

And so the rediscovery of emotion was in the context of huge contempt for emotion.

That emotion was a nuisance variable, that people could be too emotional, that children needed to stop just having such intense feelings, that you weren't supposed to be upset, you were supposed to think with your mind, you were supposed to be able to reason above this.

And so emotion was basically dissed, it was basically held in contempt.

And women were considered to be too emotional and therefore they couldn't be trusted in things.

Now you can see why they've had the advantage in so many things.

You can see exactly why their brains have developed more.

Sometime prior to the Second World War, women were still not allowed in Harvard because according to at least 1 individual there, women's brains weren't large enough.

And then when we discovered the real truth about adaptive brains like Einstein's brain is that they're smaller because they're more effective.

And of course it's well known and widely spread through the literature that males are more likely in general to be defended against vulnerability, suggesting that there's more inherent vulnerability there.

And when I did that diagram in terms of sensitivity and wounding, there's evidence on both sides in terms of sensitivity that males in general tend towards higher sensitivity, more allergies, and so on and so on, which are indicating of that level of vulnerability.

And when I had the chance to put the material together, when I taught parent-child relations for many years at university, it was also very clear that children, boys, experienced more wounding at the hands of their parents than girls.

And also, of course, you can see where tears are not nearly as allowed.

And so there are some difficulties that we've had with boys being both more wounded and more inherently vulnerable and therefore more likely to be defended against vulnerability.

When you see that you see the implications for this And it helps understand some of the gender differences here as well.

So the limbic system, the limbic system, the emotional brain, is basically the key part of the brain that moves us to mature.

Now, this also suggests to us why home educated students have the advantage.

This has always been the the issue is with home educated students when the research came in with this, it made no sense.

Why home educated students do better in their university entrance exams, have become favored for some of the Ivy League universities, they are in all measures of maturity, they win, academically they win.

Because their parents are for the most part not professional teachers, there is chaos in the curriculum, the pedagogy is not there, but when you understand this, you suddenly begin to understand.

When you see the home-educated child, you still see a child who can blush, you still see a child who has his feelings, You still see a child who who can have their tears when upset.

All of a sudden we realize, oh my goodness, if feeling is the issue, we understand how that could be.

If that is the issue itself, and that demonstrates how important it is, how important it is that we find a way to help children get their feelings back, or keep them from losing their feelings, this becomes more important than anything else.

No improvement in pedagogy, in curriculum, in methodology, if it doesn't address this, we will not be making headway.

This is where we need to address, and this helps again explain some of those results.

Well, I had the opportunity in Provence to try and sketch the engine of maturation.

It was a wonderful opportunity at a great place of inspiration, an old 13th century chapel that I used as my office, and I thought, can I do this?

Do I now understand enough of the unfolding of human potential that I could sketch this?

The main idea was Joy supplied me with my main food groups, wine, baguettes, and cheese, and a bit of chocolate every now and then, and that I hold up in my cave, literally it was a cave, you know, et cetera, And I went to work.

And so, it's a little bit reductionistic, but given that I spent all this time on it, I will share it with you.

And hopefully it gets to the point of the matter, distills to the essence.

And again, you can take it with a bit of a grain of salt, but it was basically to bring it down to what does the engine of maturation look like?

What is it that we need to preserve in children?

What if, what would parents and teachers yearn for more than anything?

What kinds of feelings do children need to have for the spontaneous unfolding of human potential?

And of course, at the heart of the matter is the heart, the symbol of vulnerability and of course of emotion, of vulnerability and that which moves us to mature.

And I've got the 3 arms here of the maturation process.

The 3 arms, the adaptive, the emergent, and integrative.

Now I went through all kinds of sketches in this and I finally came out to something that looks so simple.

Why did I take 2 or 3 weeks trying to sketch this?

Is it because I loved wine and baguettes and cheese so much?

It ended up to be fairly simple and I'll share it with you here.

What moves us to adapt, to recover, to be resilient?

What moves us, and we've discussed this, feelings of futility.

Feelings of futility, sadness, disappointment, keen sadness, disappointment.

It's very difficult, the language here, very difficult, because we just don't have a language around futility.

It's confused with despair, it's confused with unhappiness, it's confused with a lack of hope, it's confused with depression, it's so confused.

The word futility is rarely used in English, never mind in other languages, and sad gets used for so many different things.

But we're talking here about a pivotal feeling, a turning point, it moves us.

And so if there's stuckness, this is not movement.

If somebody is stuck in despair, stuck in unhappiness, this is not movement.

Emotion moves, and so it means a movement, a feeling moves, and so this is a movement, a pivotal, when we move in this way, and again, the movement, it follows this kind of waveform, the basic waveform of life.

And so when we move down to our sadness, we move up into it lightens as well.

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Intensive I - session 9