importance to humans of the basic emotional need and its desire for a never-ending fulfillment of that need. We might conclude that Homo sapiens has always been associated with some kind of religion, and we might also conclude that some earlier hominids too might have been associated with a religion. We don’t need a “God-gene” to explain our belief in God, as some psychologists now tell us, any more than we need a “Tooth Fairy” or an “Easter Rabbit” gene to explain children’s beliefs in a Tooth Fairy and an Easter Rabbit. Those beliefs begin with wanting to meet more of what is unmet of the basic emotional need.
To meet more fully our basic emotional need, we would want to have everything we might feel we need to be contented, and would want nothing, whatsoever, that would be unpleasant to us in any way. Our basic emotional need is a desire to pleasurably experience that all-inclusive “good” feeling that everything is going well, and, most importantly, will be going well for us. That “will be going well” implies no finality in sufficiently meeting our basic emotional need. Our basic emotional need is a desire to pleasurably feel that everything, including ourselves and everything in reality that impacts us, is just the way we want it, for us to be emotionally comfortable, if not additionally pleasured, and that it will continue to be this way without interruption, or end. That’s the feeling first engendered in us as infants, when we had a very limited view of our reality, by the emotional closeness we had with our mothering person as she physiologically and emotionally fed us, that pleasurably made us feel comfortable and contented before we fell back to sleep. Her making us pleasurably experience that “good” feeling, where everything is, and will be, “just right” for each of us, fully satisfied our basic emotional need, as we went off to sleep, escaping anything that could very easily contradict that for us in reality.
To fully meet our basic emotional need, we not only would want to perceive nothing at all about our relationships with others that would cause us to be in any way emotionally uncomfortable, but also to experience no non-relationship-oriented causes as well. We’d want to endure no discomforts, pains, stresses, anxieties, losses, limitations, or disappointments now or later. Nor would we want any doubts about our future in this regard. We’d want only pleasurable feelings of satisfaction and contentment, and no feelings of dissatisfaction or discontentment of any kind. To fully meet our basic emotional need, we would want whatever we might feel we need to be emotionally comfortable, or better, even more pleasured, on a never-ending basis. Not to have this would be a frustration of our basic emotional need. We would want anything that is emotionally gratifying and that brings us pleasure, peaceful contentment, and hope for the future, and we would want nothing at all that would bring us any displeasure, discontentment, and hopelessness. Whatever would bring us the pleasure of peaceful contentment, and any added enjoyment, would help meet our basic emotional need.
Speculating what the emotional needs of the newborn infant are, provides the best understanding of the earliest component needs, desires, and wishes of our basic emotional need. For instance, the newborn shows best our need for a continual emotional connection to someone, or some “being,” that will emotionally convey to us the feeling of our being significant. We see the need in the newborn to be cared for, to be of central importance, to be “first and foremost” to anyone, or anything else, and to be the very center of favorable attention. We see the newborn’s continual need to feel wanted, and protectively watched over, so that it will always feel safe and secure. Here, we first see the desire for an omnipresence of that which can meet well our basic emotional need and that will unendingly do so. This can later culminate in the beliefs of a religion, in which a more fully met basic emotional need is promised beyond our biological demise. We also see in the newborn the need to be listened to. By listening, the mothering person can better recognize her newborn’s discomforts, whatever they might be, enabling her to correct what needs to be corrected to pleasurably make her newborn emotionally comfortable again, and to keep it that way. Being listened to then, was of supreme emotional importance and will remain of supreme importance in meeting our basic emotional need, as long as we live. Meeting more of our basic emotional need in our infancy made us feel more emotionally comfortable, and meeting less of that need, made us feel less emotionally comfortable. That doesn’t change during the rest of our lives.
In earliest infancy, we see best the emotional importance of the mouth not only in making known when we were experiencing anything at all unpleasant to us, but also in pleasurably meeting our basic emotional need as we were physiologically and emotionally fed. It was through our mouths that we first felt emotionally attached to someone else that could make us feel emotionally comfortable, central in importance, cared for, and carefully listened to. It was through our mouths that we first gained those much desired “everything is all right” feelings that our basic emotional need demands. We continue to have that capability to be emotionally “fed” through our mouths throughout our lives by our involvement in any on-going talking to a perceived interested listener, or a group of perceived interested listeners. Those component demands of our basic emotional need, that were first met through our mouths as infants, will continue to be of the greatest emotional importance to us throughout our lives. Our mouths remain a prominent means by which we can meet our basic emotional need. We use our mouths to talk, and when we do, we can become emotionally attached to a listener in an unrecognized way. When people listen to us talk, they are making us the center of their attention. It’s as though our listeners are unconsciously conveying to us, that out of this boundless world of billions of galaxies, we’re now central in importance, and the very center of their attention. We’re emotionally duplicating that earlier experience we had with our listening mother when we were pleasurably made to feel wanted, all-important, and the very center of favorable attention. Our duplicating that earlier experience we had with our mothering person, when we talk to a perceived interested listener, may now help to meet what might be unmet of our basic emotional need. We do the very same thing for others when we listen to them talk. We make them the center of our attention, and in doing so, we emotionally convey to them that they are of significant value and of central importance. Although it is unlikely to be recognizable to them, people may be mutually meeting each other’s basic emotional need whenever they are engaged in any on-going or “extended” talking and listening with each other, even if that talking and listening appears as nothing more than “small talk.”
Our continuing desire to have our basic emotional need met, when we leave our infancy behind, is exemplified in our religions. One can often see the desire to meet the basic emotional need in the popular hymns of our religions, whatever those religions might be. The universal promise of the past and present religions of the world, of a life in some here-after, is essentially that our basic emotional need will someday be fully and eternally met, which gives good evidence of the basic emotional need’s never-ending importance to us. But in that “here-after,” there would have to be a “perfect world,” that’s “just right” in every way for each of us, to meet fully our basic emotional need on a continual basis. That “perfect world” would have to be uniquely pleasurable to each and every one of us, where we would have only comfortable feelings, with no uncomfortable feelings at all.
Meeting our basic emotional need in reality became more difficult as we left infancy behind. Because we slept less, we became more familiar with reality where it soon became evident to us that we couldn’t always be the center of favorable attention of our mothering person. It didn’t take long for each of us to discover that she wasn’t always listening to us, and couldn’t always be right there to meet our every component demand of our basic emotional need, even if she was the very best of mothers. We soon discovered that we weren’t the center of the universe, and that the world didn’t revolve around us, like we might have earlier felt it did, when we slept most of the time, and when awake, it very much did seem that way which met very well our basic emotional need. We found out that we weren’t of supreme significance, as we might have earlier felt we were, and as our basic emotional need would have us to be. We found out that we weren’t omnipotent like we might have thought we were, when earlier it did seem that way when we could magically make our mothering person appear, to meet our basic emotional need, by just experiencing the need to be mothered. We soon came to realize that we weren’t always wanted, and that we couldn’t always be free of fear, disappointment, discomfort, and pain, as our
