Book review: “Why Love Matters – How affection Shapes a Babies Brain” by Sue Gerhardt

Dr Sue Gerhardt is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She studied under the Tavistock clinic for her MA in Child Observation. It is interesting to learn about a different branch of the Tavistock clinic after it’s recent history as the gender reassignment clinic for young people in the UK. Dr Gerhardt is best known for her publication of the book “Why Love Matters – How affection shapes a Babies Brain”. Which is the content of this book review. However, Dr Gerhardt is also a registered psychotherapist in private practice and co-founder of the Oxford Parent Infant Project Charity. This charity therapeutically supports parents and babies in the area of Oxfordshire.

After reading the book I can say that the three main themes that are covered are as follows. Firstly, babies are incredibly vulnerable, especially if they do not have enough care during infancy, which can be incredibly stressful for the baby. Secondly, if adequate care is not given to the baby during the first few months and years, this can have long term health problems. Finally, love and affection towards the baby can protectthem from the stress of not having enough care and thus protect them from developmental problems.

Dr Gerhardt begins by describing the brain development. The brain grows in stages, with the social brain developing last. This is arguably because the social world human babies grow into is the most complex social structure of all known beings. There is far more to learn about the social world of a human than of an ant for example. Dr Gerhardt explains in her book the way in which a baby’s brain develops is directly determined by the quality and quantity of the social interactions they have with others. With the single most important ingredient for a baby’s social development being the visual observation of other’s smiles. Furthermore, babies love to touch and look at their carers, and these senses make social interactions pleasurable.

Dr Gerhardt explained, in quite some depth, the neurological development in early years.

The book explains that the brain’s neural network is determined by social patterns. Amongst this the human stress response is explored. The nature of cortisol, at the time of writing the book at least, had had little research undertaken on developing infants. However, we know a lot about cortisol levels in adult humans and links to depression, anxiety, and even physiological implications to parts of the brain. Stress has its uses, but it can also damage the health of both adults and babies. Babies depend on carers for their survival, which is why their absence is so distressing. Absent caregivers will tend to produce ‘resistently’ attached. These babies show more extreme emotions in an attempt to get the care givers attention. Dr Gerhart states that stressed parents have stressed children and social deprivation during babyhood is linked to depression later in life.

Something that I found very useful from this book to help my practice is a greater understanding of attachment theory, and how it is formed. Especially the avoidant or resistant attachment style. Dr Gerhardt postulates that the concept of self soothing, or letting the baby cry out their distress does nothing more than create insecure attachment. The baby fight or flight response is triggered. Cry louder, or withdraw. These two processes underpin the avoidant and resistant attachment styles. How this will inform my practice is I can be more mindful to encourage my client not to focus on the presenting, and arguably superficial, issues. But rather to gently encourage the client to focus on the feelings around the situations and explore the value and meaning of relationships. This will help the client understand the root of their distress as a whole, their attachment style. Rather than focus on each individual situation in isolation.

Furthermore, the idea at the end of ‘re-parenting’. The idea that by building a personal relationship for therapeutic purposes only, the individual can explore the way he or she regulates as an adult. Creating a safe space for my clients to explore their regulation and reflecting back different emotions would be helpful to include in my practice.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and found it very helpful. I found it quite challenging to read at points because of how common, at least in the western world, some of the practices creating insecure attachments were. It feels that the western world moved away from what is best for baby and attributed notions of ‘the baby is spoilt’ when it cries for help. This seems quite sad when you analyse it properly, but I know of parents, to this day, that believe in that philosophy.