Wisdom Notes on Spirituality

Aspects of Bonding

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During the 1970s I had found faith in two English yoga teachers, Jack Bolton and John Moore, who themselves were disciples of an Indian teacher, swami Dev Murti. In my own psycho-analysis, faith was an issue that I needed to understand. Faith is a form of bonding. In my view, understanding bonding is the first step to understanding the meaning of the spiritual journey through life.

After a few years of my psycho-analysis I put together my ideas on bonding. Using some traditional ideas I separated bonding into three factors: imprinting, transference, and identification, and these correlate to the three factors of consciousness which are emotion, mind, and will power. Whilst all factors of consciousness are a part of the three factors of bonding, the emphasis changes, so that each factor of consciousness takes turn being the  centre of the stage. My use of these terms reflects my own experience, and is not always the same as any traditional use. I found that the emotion that underlies each factor is always jealousy. The basic way that I separate them is that, for a heterosexual boy:

Imprinting centres on emotion and the femininity in the mother and the masculinity in the father.
As the boy grows up he subconsciously uses the mother’s femininity as his preferred pattern of beauty in a woman, and the father’s masculinity as his preferred pattern of beauty in a man. The emotion is jealousy in self-pity mode.[²]

Transference centres on the mind and reflects beliefs, needs, sexual attitudes, moral attitudes, and behavioural traits.
These attributes reveal aspects of value (what I am). The emotion is jealousy in love mode.

Identification centres on the will or will power and reflects traits and attitudes of personal stature and temperament, such as poise, courtesy, nobility, dignity, slyness, trust, friendliness, benevolence, gullibility, shyness, etc.
These attributes reveal aspects of character (who I am). The emotion is jealousy in love mode.

Two Primary Tasks

The baby, as it grows up into adulthood, has two primary tasks to accomplish: the creation of an ego, followed by the creation of an identity. It uses the bonding process to achieve these tasks. The way that I understand bonding is that it occurs because the baby does not have an existing ego. The new-born infant has no memory of where it came from or who it is; the reason for this is that it does not have a conscious mind but only a subconscious one. Hence it does not have an ego. The ego has to be created, but not from nothing. The infant has a subconscious mind, and this subconsciousness is the primary material out of which the ego is made, aided by what the infant learns from the bonding process. Using a theory of reincarnation, I assume that the infant’s subconsciousness contains an accumulation of psychological material acquired in previous incarnations.

The creation of an ego happens as the baby slowly creates a conscious mind. This creation occurs within the first 12–18 months of life; I assume this because by this time the baby has developed a small vocabulary of words. This development of language indicates to me that a conscious mind is now functioning. Language formation implies logical thinking, and hence requires an ego (the subconscious mind uses symbolism, association of ideas, and intuition for its thinking activity, not logic).[³]

To help in the task of creating an ego the infant attaches itself to the parent through imprinting. It takes its mother as a role model. It identifies with the parental image. As the child grows up it changes its identification model several times, to father, to adolescent peers, to teachers. The resulting adult is a montage of different models of identification.

Once the young child has developed its consciousness sufficiently, it can begin to round out its ego by using transference. My understanding of transference is rather different from most views of it. Transference is basically the transfer of a person’s beliefs and values onto other people. In the family situation, the adults transfer their beliefs and values to the young child. How the child reacts to this transfer depends on the kind of people the parents are. If the parents are benevolent, then the child is likely to accept transference; if the parents are non-caring in some ways, then the child will become confused by transference. The effects of transference continue to influence us even when we have become an adult. We can have both good and bad beliefs and values, and so transference has both good and bad effects. 

For example, if as a child we were hostile towards our father, then once we become an adult we are likely to have hostile feelings towards any men in positions of authority over us. Or if our father was domineering and made us feel submissive towards him, then once we are an adult we are likely to become submissive in the presence of an older domineering man.

As a child grows up, it has to construct its own sense of identity. Its identity is based partly on its character and partly on its beliefs and values. The child creates some of its beliefs and values from its own individuality, and also absorbs beliefs and values from its parents and its peers. Sometimes it is too young to recognise which beliefs and values come from within itself and which from other people. The two sources of beliefs and values overlap, not always harmoniously. So the child may experience fuzzy ego boundaries between itself and other people: it may be confused about who it is. This confusion may cause the child to go through a difficult period of adjustment as it tries to harmonise any distress within itself caused by conflicting beliefs and values.

Bonding in Adult Relationships

More often than not, the bonding process produces long-lasting effects on the child as it grows into an adult. All through life its relationships to other adults mirror its relationships that it has to its parents. Overall, bonding means that the values and traits of parental character and identity that a child admires become the basis of the traits and values of adult character and identity that it will later, as an adult itself, admire in other people.

Even when he is an adult, the person’s pattern of adult bonding is subconsciously modelled on his childhood bonding. So if he did not have some of his bonding needs met by his parents, now he is an adult he seeks to fulfil his bonding needs through emotional attachments to suitable partners or even teachers. For example, if, when he was a child, he did not have a caring mother, then now that he is an adult he will be attracted towards older women who have a caring nature – he can bond with suitable older women because they will fulfil his childhood needs for loving care.

Overall, when a man is acting from within his pattern of bonding then at that moment his relationship with any woman is modelled on his relationship to his mother; similarly, he acts towards other men in accordance with his relationship to his father. In any adult relationship that features bonding, then jealousy will be an important ingredient of it.

At some time in his spiritual journey, the seeker will find faith. Faith is a form of bonding, and hence the seeker will have jealousy underpinning some stages of his spiritual growth (though usually he will not be aware of such jealousy). The role of jealousy is ambiguous. It provides the emotional connection to a teacher, but it also helps to bring the problems of ordinary relationships into the person’s relationships with the teacher and other disciples.

[¹]. See the first of three articles on bonding, Overview of Bonding. [1]

[²]. I have three articles on Emotion on the Home page. [2]

[³]. For an in-depth view of creating an ego, see the article Creation of the Ego in my book Towards a General Theory of Confusion. [3]

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