answer is temperament. Yes, babies have personalities from the moment their little heads pop out into the world. We are preprogrammed to experience life in certain ways. Some of us are more sensitive than others. Some are more resilient. Some are shy, others outgoing. Some are more prone to aggression; others withdraw in the face of conflict and anxiety. Some lean more on intellect, others on emotion. Some hear a loud sound and shrug their shoulders, thinking, “Eh, no big deal.” Others hear the same sound and say, “Oh my God! The world is coming to an end!”
The meaning we make from our experiences—even when we are mere babes—is what I have in mind when I say we each have an unconscious inner world. Even before our brains have developed fully, even before we have words, even before we can put two and two together, we are creating meaning. Take the three types of infants in our nursery scenario above. The quiet baby may have a sense that being in the world is a kind of numbing isolation or, better yet, a kind of ignorant bliss. The comforted baby may have some sense of safety in being held by a loving presence or, alternatively, a sense of self-confidence in being able to handle life’s troubles. The inconsolable baby may suffer her way through life with a constant feeling of nameless dread, alone and threatened in a dangerous world. There is a kind of early, meaning-making process there—the beginnings of an unconscious psychological life.
Melanie Klein believed that our life in infancy has a powerful impact on how we develop into adults. She emphasized that it is not only our experiences that shape us, but the meaning we make of them. And what we take from our experiences has a lot to do with what we bring to them.
Remember Jacob and Esau from the Bible story? Jacob and Esau were the rivalrous twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah, descendants of Abraham in the patriarchal line of Israel. As the story goes, the twins were already fighting with each other in the womb. At the very point of birth, Jacob was grasping the heel of his one-minute-older brother as he slid through the birth canal, already showing signs of the competitiveness that would lead to such radical betrayal many years later. In the end, Jacob would steal his older brother’s birthright, and the countries they would later lead would be at odds with each other for centuries. This is such a great example of what Klein meant when she said that our personalities have a trajectory from the beginning.
Now you may be skeptical, thinking this is just a story. How could a newborn—never mind a fetus—already have a personality? Believe it or not, we now have modern-day evidence to back it up. Alessandra Piontelli, an Italian psychoanalyst, did a fascinating set of studies observing the ultrasounds of twins in utero.4 Studying the twins at several points during the mother’s pregnancy, she found that the way they interacted in the womb—their relational style with one another, if you will—carried forward into how they related after birth and as they grew into more developed children. Our basic personalities are set more than we would like to believe they are.
If you had siblings or you have children, you know what I mean. Even if you look back at photos or videos of yourself as a young child, I’ll bet you can see traces of the adult you have become. While our early experiences shape us, they only shape us so much. For example, if we pay attention to the differences between children in the same family, we can see that the same parents can be viewed by their children in different ways. One child might see his or her mother as loving and available, another might see her as overprotective and smothering, and yet another as stern and demanding. Even if we take into account factors such as birth order and changing circumstances, there is just something so compelling about the idea that our inborn personalities influence the meaning we make of our lives.
So how does environment come into play? As I like to say, while innate constitution may have the first word to say about who we become, it does not have the last. The way the world responds to our inborn predisposition shapes us—for better or worse. Jacob’s envy was fueled by his mother playing favorites; Esau’s naïve self-sufficiency was fueled by his father’s blind loyalty. Instead of helping to rein in their sons’ inborn rivalry, they encouraged it. Perhaps this is what it means for the sins of the parents to be visited on their children.
I think environment affects personality development like it affects intelligence. We are each born with some range of intellectual potential. With a rich environment—such as listening to Mozart in the womb, early creative stimulation, good nutrition, good schools, involved parents, and exposure to lots of different experiences that expand the mind—we develop toward the upper end of that range. But with an environment that lacks creative stimulation, proper nutrition, and parental involvement and care, we develop toward the lower end of that range. I think it is the same with the personality. An innately competitive child will grow up to be a competitive adult—but with positive influences, competitiveness can become a strength, and with negative influences, it can become a liability.
Certainly environment makes a difference. We can think of many examples. A particularly warm family experience can soften the sharp edges of a prickly porcupine temperament. A hostile and perfectionistic family experience can intensify that same predisposition. An abusive environment can weaken the resolve and resilience of even the most optimistic little personality, while a supportive, challenging environment can foster his or her great success in life. We are a blend of our psychological hardwiring and the software operating system of our early environment.
As we grow into adulthood, this lens helps us make sense of our experiences, but it also tends to distort them.
Perhaps you now have a sense of how I understand the development of the mind, how the internal and external worlds are constantly interacting with each other as we try to make sense of our experiences. Our unconscious expectations become a kind of filter through which we experience life for many years to come. As we grow into adulthood, this lens helps us make sense of our experiences, but it also tends to distort them. We think we are seeing the world as it really is, but actually we are seeing what the baby inside expects to see. And that is why we seem so insane sometimes. We are approaching our lives through the eyes of our baby selves, through the lens of unconscious reality.
As Buddha said, “Life is a creation of the mind.”
A contemporary version of this idea adds a humorous twist: To paraphrase Albert Einstein, reality is only an illusion, although it is a very persistent one.
My thoughts about the unconscious mind are really a kind of introduction to all that is to come in the following chapters. They naturally lead to a critical question that I suspect is now on your mind. If the personality is so fixed and in such a state of confusion, how on earth can we ever hope to change?
IF YOU’RE NOT MOVING FORWARD, YOU’RE MOVING BACKWARD
WHETHER YOU SUBSCRIBE TO THE theory of evolution, intelligent design, or creation, it is plainly evident that all living things are wired with the express purpose of surviving. Human beings are no different in this respect. We have a strong drive toward self-protection. We all know what it feels like to be galvanized by the instinct to flee or fight in the face of danger, whether that danger is physical or emotional. But we humans are unique among living things because we are also wired with the express purpose of growing psychologically. We have an innate urge to grow our minds by learning from and making meaning of our experiences.
There are other ways to describe
