Its talk is on a general theme of inauthenticity and authenticity.

I'm going to be speaking from a perspective of two of my favorite 20th century psychologists, Donald

Winnicott, Heinz Kohut, and I'm also then going to be bringing in some Buddhist perspectives and how we

address the issues that I've introduced and then we'll see where George takes it from there.

Okay, so from the earliest infancy, a core instinct we have is connection.

We seek connection with our caretakers.

We're communicating not through words in the first years of our lives, but through emotional expressions, gestures, body movements, prize.

We're seeking a bunch of different needs are asking to be met. We're seeking first and

foremost security, the sense that somebody is there to protect us

to keep us warm to feed us

We're all born and from one perspective very prematurely it takes a very long time for a human being to be self-sustaining in any meaningful definition of that phrase.

So we're seeking security without which we would perish.

We're seeking emotional tolerance,

which means someone who tolerates the way we express our needs,

through cries, through gestures, facial expressions, movements.

We're seeking nearing, which means someone not only can read our emotions,

but signal them back in a way that lets us know they understand how we feel.

They know that we're frightened or scared or hungry or overwhelmed or whatever we're feeling and that they, the caretaker can help us find some stability.

We're also seeking, eventually these needs become more refined and we're seeking things like role models, people who show us that we can accomplish and do things

in the world.

And a sense of affiliation, which means feeling that we're part of a family or a group of people not just something that is

being taken care of but someone who has something of value.

...