Origins of Love and Hate by Ian Suttie

I have just begun reading this book and it is far more technical psychology than I am able to follow entirely, but I find some of his ideas very interesting and more meaningful than popular Freud (I say it that way because I have never read Freud, but all of us are familiar with many of his ideas).

One of his first ideas is that the theories of infants and children as being like primitive animals is entirely wrong. Suttie says: "the child mind is less like that of primitive animals than is the adult mind ... vastly different from that of free-living, self-supporting animals. Instead of an armament of instincts ... it is born with a simple attachment-to-mother who is the sole source of food and protection."

Then he builds from that to argue (mind you I am only in chapter one) that from this primal attachment-to-mother which is stronger in humans than any other animal comes play, cooperation, competition and ultimately culture. This is why "man has become virtually the only cultural animal."

Then he says: "Necessity is not 'the mother of invention'; Play is." And "in man a collection of instincts is replaced by a relatively aimless and plastic curiosity, attachment, and interests, is of course the reason why this play period can be turned to such account. Non-appetitive 'interest' combines with need-for-company to apply the drive to the cultural pursuits of knowledge for its own sake, and to the development of a tradition which can be accumulated indefinitely. These three characteristics, then, represent the advantages that the course of evolution has conferred upon man. Respectively they make him social, educable, and progressive. At the same time evolution has left man with so little definite biological guidance in the form of instinct and with so much drive toward association and experiment that he has become unstable and pervertible."

Yes. I see that and find it interesting that he can see so much through the lens of the simple idea of our being born dependent and therefore social, in need of nurture.