Published November 2, 2021, The NASAP Newlsetter (Connections), by Erik Mansager, PhD
I’ve drawn the title for this issue’s column from an earlier presentation (Connections, March 2021) about similarities between Dan Siegel (Brain-iac) and Alfred Adler (Human-iac).
Siegel’s summary presentations of Interpersonal Neurobiology acknowledges that neuro-connections grow stronger once they happenstancially form in our prenatal and perinatal brains. Adler concurs that infants take information in as it presents itself to them – from within their bodies and from outside of them. They make sense of it only later when structures of the developing brain mature enough to evidence a developing mind. Infants start out only relatively open-to-experience. Siegel emphasises that we can continue a certain openness to form new pathways all our life. But that flexibility is not automatic, nor accessible to all, at the personal-growth level. Why not?