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• Sunday, December 21, 2008 08:53 PM

  Cacioppo is entirely right about the evolutionary basis for distress,

  Dumm is not wrong, and praise be to god on high for a feminist writer who has no apparent fear of evolutionary psychology.

  In children the same psychological/physiological/behavioral need, distress, and somewhat different set of reactions gets constructed as “insecure attachment”, “overanxious disorder of childhood”, later “ADHD” and other disorders. The dependence on others for safety and psychological security is even more profound and its failure potentially more damaging in early childhood (it is a dependence for survival) and sets attachment-injured children up at greater vulnerability to anxiety-related disorders as adults.

  The medical solution? – astonishingly, to chalk it up to biology, “disease” model, dose them with medicalized speed (er . . . stimulant medication) and not worry about lack of evidence for long-term benefits, potential side effects, or prevention. At least articles like Ms. Mieszkowski’s can help move us past medical models of distress and toward better understanding, prevention, and treatment.

  Clinically distressing loneliness in adults is related to early experiences and the internal templates they generate. Learning to tolerate solitude and create relatedness paradoxically depends initially on secure attachment to, then its opposite - separation, independence, and differentiation from family. Retained need for connections with family of origin is a developmental failure, representing lack of capacity to independently choose and create new relationships with other adults, and as such will be experienced as a form of aloneness. Western cultural norms, medical models, and parenting advice have tended to work against these basic developmental needs.

  —J.C. Miller Read J.C. Miller's other letters
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