Our innate core needs are based in the premise that in order to survive, and indeed to thrive within our environment, one needs connection, protection, autonomy, and belonging with communicative meaning-making.
Such core needs drive our inherent motivation toward attachment. That is, as infants we are born to seek and maintain proximity to a specific figure (i.e. the primary caregiver / attachment figure).
This drive evolved primarily in service of safety from predation (Bowlby 1969 as cited in Main, 2000), shelter from the elements, defence against direct attack, as well as enabling a continued orientation toward the movements of the pack (Main, 2000). Further to this proximity seeking and maintaining can be seen as emerging from epochs in time where “death was far more likely to result from one hour’s separation from caregiving figures than from a much longer period without food. For reasons such as these human and other ground-living primate infants evolved to continually monitor the accessibility of their attachment figures, and to attempt to maintain a reasonable degree of proximity even in relatively non-threatening situations.” (Main, 2000, p. 1069)
With this in mind, it can be noted that throughout (healthy/ideal) development we inherently move from periods of complete attachment dependancy (baby) which is attainted only through physical proximity, to periods of attachment dependancy and orientation (child) which is attainted through physical and psychological proximity, then toward periods of attachment differentiation and interdependance (adolescence) which is attained through a sense of “felt-security“, to an embodied sense of interdependance which is attained through the previously internalised physical and psychological proximity and a now solid sense of Self (McElhaney et al., 2009).
Finally, it is important to acknowledge that as we develop and move through these periods of dependancy, internalisation, differentiation, and interdependance we implicitly learn certain internal and external repertoire’s (attachment styles and patterns of protection) that are established and embodied in the provision of our innate core needs for Connection, Protection, and Belonging with communicative meaning-making.
