Dr. Gabor Maté

So that person, I don't know, I can't prognosticate what's going to happen to them.

But if they don't work it out in general, they're at risk for some kind of mental or physical manifestation.

That's my experience.

When a child is born, the child has two needs.

The first need is for attachment, and attachment is contact, connection, love.

Without that, the human child does not survive.

Any mammalian child or even an avian child doesn't survive, so that as soon as you get past the level of reptiles, the reptile is hatched, the mother's long gone by then, and the reptile infant either lives or dies, but there's no attachment to a parenting figure.

As soon as you get to the level of birds, the baby bird has to have an attachment with the parents.

The parents have to be attached to the baby.

Otherwise, the infant simply does not survive.

Mammalians even more so, and most so the human because we're the least developed, the least mature, with the least developed brains, and the most dependent for the longest period of time of any creature in the universe.

So our attachment needs are enormous, and they remain important throughout lifetime because we have to have attachments to form societies, social groups without which we don't survive.

So attachment is a huge need.

We have to connect.

belong, be loved by, and love.

That's just a basic human need.

But we have another need as well, which is for authenticity.

Authenticity is the capacity, as I said earlier, to

know what we feel, to be in touch with our bodies, and to be able to express who we are and manifest who we are in our activities and in our relationships.

Now, why is that?