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When the coordination of meanings about ‘our’ connection do not mesh

by Mark Furlong

There's always a heap of feeling when the ground gets shaky. This state of heightened affect only amplifies when there is, or if there is a prospect of, an earthquake. For example, you get to know someone and, after a time, you think you’d like to get closer and know them better. You dare to ask: how about joining me for a drink? Taken aback, the other says I didn’t think we had that kind of relationship. This statement is confronting. It is also clarifying, mindful there remains the chance the other’s position might not be final: you note that the statement is in the past tense. In this in-between space there is no definite co-ordination of meanings about what kind of relationship there is right now, or there might be into the future.

Relationships have a two-fold function: they both hold and process meanings. If there is a difference in the definition, and therefore the meaning, of a relationship between its participants – or if a category shift is contemplated or has occurred – feelings can be extreme. A second example tells this story.

You don’t do it lightly, but you go over your immediate manager’s head to report a difficult issue to the person to whom your manager reports. Later, your manager and you meet. The atmosphere is tense. After some awkward preliminaries, they say 'I thought we had a good working relationship’ In this situation you know, you really know, that your ‘boss’ feels betrayed. Their tone of voice may be guarded, but you know that what you did was deeply upsetting. However necessary it may have been, you are aware that your action was positionally aggressive and has possibly scuttled their trust in you.

Events can redefine relationships. You turn up regularly when someone is ill … or you don’t. In the former, your behaviour asserts the relationship is ‘with a mate’ whereas in the latter you remain an acquaintance or your mateship is queried, if not re-defined as ‘not really first circle.’ Similarly, unless the parties had an ‘open relationship’ understanding of their romance, if one party ‘strays’ this will cause great distress. Terms like ‘unfaithful’ and ‘infidelity’ have very deep roots.

Broadly stated, when the definition of 'our' relationship is subject to contradiction, asymmetry, uncertainty or transition this unsettles the coordination of meanings upon which stability depends. This might result in you feeling giddy with excitement – Kapow. We are really falling for each other! It can also cause profound anxiety – What a **** **! I just can’t rely on you anymore. In both cases there is emotional intensity. Whether the context is romance, the workplace, friendships – whatever the field – what is at issue is the presence, or absence, of a co-ordination of meanings concerning the nature of the relationship.

In each relationship we are always on probation. Your next action, like what you did in the past, is subject to scrutiny. Are you acting like a good sister, a faithful partner, a friend that is always there if needed, a reliable colleague when the heat is on, a trustworthy team player when you miss selection for that big game? However strong one’s track record, there is always the possibility you – or the other – might fail to meet the elements that compose the definition of the relationship that one participant, or all involved, have. Formally put, the current definition of the relationship tends to govern the behaviour of the participants. This acknowledged, adherence to the role performance that is expected cannot be fully guaranteed. However much reliability might be reasonably expected, some friendships unexpectedly crash, firm business relationships can suddenly break up, out of the blue a parent might act, or not act, in a way that traduces an implicit promise that has been held sacred by one of more children.

Stepping back, each significant relationship is a profound container. Girded by trust, this container warrants its citizens a degree of emotional safety in an unpredictable world. This usefulness, this key function, is the reason relationships have been accorded an extraordinary privilege in every jurisdiction and across each millennium: they were granted the vote despite their lack of visual presence or terrestrial voice. This agency is related to the accountability that participants experience with respect to the many different categories of relationship to which each person belongs: am I being a true mate? Am I living up to what my mum would want me to be? That a process of internal evaluation of one’s faithfulness to these affiliations at least significantly, if not absolutely, regulates subjectivity and action is as undeniable as it is true that we are subject to a governing evaluation by the collectives to which we belong – to our significant-others, our peers and (on occasion) by the broader social field / community. As interdependent entities we are nodes in a network both internally and environmentally. What is at issue in terms of internal regulation, and from a social cohesion perspective, is that the norms and values that historically once held firm are – for better and for worse – are increasingly subject to dispute and transition.

Like every point of transition, being betwixt-and-between generates uncertainty. Sometimes this leans into excitement, sometimes anxiety. When the plane is about to land. When you dive in to hit the cold water. In the drama of a child being born. Anthropologists describe rituals of transition this way: there is a disorienting liminal stage which occurs between the candidate not being what they once were, and not yet being what they will become. Ceremony – a consensually respected social frame – holds this re-defining process together. There is not an agreed transformation on the way, but there are some good signs – what the sociologist Anthony Giddens termed ‘exceptions and countertrends’ – that speak to the prospects for optimism and constructive action.

With its in-built emphasis on secure and ethical relationships, Bouverie’s philosophy seeks to be one of these bright sparks. Centre staff advocate for, and seek to enact, mutualistic affiliations with the families we serve – and in the collegial relations that hum at the core of what the centre practices. Such quality connections go some way towards ‘holding against’ the uncertainty that a betwixt-and-between context generates.

At its most elemental level, each of us can also contribute to the bountiful possibilities that relationships manufacture. For example, in the early example of ‘going over the bosses’ head’ it is possible that trust might be promoted, rather than traduced, if the junior party had let her boss know in advance she was intending to break ranks about issue X. Tough to do, but it is possible this action might open up a new kind of relational space. Knowing your junior staff member took the matter at hand that seriously might also prompt a re-appraisal of the issue at hand. It might also build confidence in the relationship to know that a junior staff member would prefer to have a difficult conversation with you than ‘betraying’ you by going behind your back without warning. After the initial shock, wouldn’t it be good to know we have a no-shocks, up-front relationship?

By Mark Furlong

Rather than treat them mean to keep them keen, we tend to marry our pet ideas. That humans bond with the ideas they value is not a practice restricted to lay folk. Professionals of all kinds, including therapists, can also default to having an abiding, and unthinking, contract with the theories they have internalised.

This pattern was respectfully referenced by Masud Khan in his introduction to Donald Winnicott’s celebrated Therapeutic Consultations in Child Psychiatry. In his forward Khan argued that many of Winnicott’s innovations should be understood as ‘regulatory fictions’ rather than as truisms. In detailing his argument Khan points to several terms identified with Winnicott’s work – think ‘transitional objects’ and ‘the holding environment’ – and suggests these ideas should be viewed as useful constructs rather than eternal facts. These ideas, Khan argues, are guides that help us order and interpret experience, but they are not from The Stone Tablets. Beware, he cautions, if these constructs come to insinuate themselves into the circuitry of professional culture and practice.

In this argument Khan, a psychoanalytic insider, asks practitioners to take a critically reflective approach to the ideas that are embedded in the standard accounts that have been passed on. Rather than singling out specific examples, a key assumption that has long been the axle of received developmental theory might give Khan’s point broader purchase.

It is often assumed that ethical and affectionately able adults have had childhoods that were steady and disruption free. At first, this statement seems bullet-proof yet, standing back, it can be argued that some degree of childhood trauma is not aberrant, but rather expected, even necessary. For example, in Civilization and its Discontents Freud argued that the imposition of the Reality Principle was psychically explosive for each and every infant. Depending on the breadth of the chosen definition, disruption can be understood as a normative experience rather than as an adversely rupturing life event. Of course, this is not to say bonding is not essential: you don’t need to be familiar with the details of Michael Rutter's Romanian Orphan Study to know there are severe emotional and cognitive consequences if infants are attachment deprived. This knowledge he ‘held’ as valid, even as the ambit, and sanctity, of certain aspects of attachment theory is questioned.

Introduced in John Bowlby’s The Nature of the Child's Tie to his Mother, the premise of the theory is that reliable attachment builds the ‘secure base’ each child requires. Initially, it was contended that reliable attachment depended on the presence of a single maternal care-giver. As the theory developed it quickly it became clear to practitioners and theorists that children can develop a ‘secure base’ – an internalized dynamo-object that steadies and soothes – without this being an entirely mum-centered business. More recently, theorists have broadened their conceptions. The conditions enabling healthy attachment are now said to be inclusive of child rearing practices that are diverse, with more collectivist assemblies especially valorized. This broadened understanding sees current research acknowledging that, to this point, the role of other key attachment figures (e.g. second parent, grandparents, & teachers) and of wider socio-familial context has yet to be adequately explored (Opie et al., 2021). As recently noted by Painter et al (2025) ‘only a few studies examined the place of kin and cultural connection’ (and there) ‘is a notable gap in studies that track developmental trajectories across diverse cultural backgrounds, care relationships, and kinship systems. In Australia, this especially includes relational pathways in collectivist First Nations communities.’ As we now know, the hetero-normative, late modern, Western nuclear family cannot be considered the necessary cradle for healthy development.

This re-visioning is notable, but in some quarters there remains a stubborn assumption that early life experience has a linear relationship with the psyche of adult self. This assumption proposes that the child’s inner life, and subsequent attachment style, will be drop-forged in proportion to their early attachment needs being met. In contrast to this mechanistic view, contemporary attachment theory is more optimistic. For example, like Bowlby before her, Mary Main (2000; 1093) has stressed that attachment "security is in no way fixed or fully determined in infancy” (Main, 2000: 1093). In this view early attachment mediates rather than determines.

Mindful it was historically proposed that there were three ‘attachment types’ – secure; avoidant; anxious – the current view is that each child will develop one of four ‘attachment styles’ – secure; avoidant; anxious; disorganized. Given this evolution, it seems likely there will be further revisions in how development is classified and ‘normified.’ For example, although currently under-examined, it is possible that a greater capacity to develop meaningful affinities might be mobilised across the life course. Rather than sequestered within the developmental epochs of early childhood (infancy; toddlerhood; pre-school/early school), it seems likely individuals can develop this capacity across their adult life. How might this happen?

As adults we can choose to, or we can have the good fortune to, participate in interactions that aggregate trust. That a sense of camaraderie will be achieved is not a given; belonging, a secure sense of ‘us-ness’, is generated if and when we engage with, and stay the course with, others in whatever form meaningful involvement takes – joining with others to look after a dying friend; repairing a neighbour’s dam, keeping the band playing. The human capacity for connection is anarchically creative as we witness the endless number of forms friendship, romance and sociality manifest. We can choose to interact securely and ethically. For example, one can choose to not ‘flake’ – to turn up to events and occasions one has agreed to even if you don’t feel like it. In many instances this stance can embed solidarity even if a preferred outcome is not achieved. As George Schulz, a former US Secretary of State, observed: trust is the coin of the realm.

Trust is a key theme, arguably the key theme, in studies of early attachment. This same theme has been explored in many genres and disciplines. For example, Sissela Bok, a moral philosopher, argues that ‘Whatever matters to human beings, trust is the atmosphere in which it thrives.’ Bok asks: if I cannot trust your word, I cannot know I will be treated fairly, that my interests will be taken to heart and that you will not do me harm.’ Many current practices endanger trust by rendering personal relationships provisional. A concrete example is the practice referred to as ‘flaking’ – the cancelling of social arrangements at the last minute. Rationalized as self-care – I’ll give it a miss. Looking after myself needs to come first – this practice undermines the expectation that trust can be placed in the words and actions of the other. Once de-centred, the reliability of the axle around which significant-other networks orbit loses its bearings.

Amongst others, Filosa et al (2024) contend that ‘Earned-Secure Attachment (ESA) can be defined as the process by which individuals with insecure childhood attachment rise above malevolent childhood experiences to develop secure relationships patterns in adulthood.’ Mindful it might be considered a misuse of expert vocabulary, an optimistic view says that each of us can build ‘earned security’ in practicing trustworthy, other-oriented relationships.

References

Bok, S., 2011. Lying: Moral choice in public and private life. Vintage.

Bowlby, J., 1958. The Nature of the Child's Tie to his Mother. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 39, pp.350-373.

Filosa, M., Sharp, C., Gori, A. and Musetti, A., 2024. A comprehensive scoping review of empirical studies on earned secure attachment. Psychological reports, p.00332941241277495.

Main, M. (2000). The organized categories of infant, child, and adult attachment: Flexible vs. inflexible attention under attachment-related stress, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 48(4), 1055-1096, p.1093.

Opie, J.E., McIntosh, J.E., Esler, T.B., Duschinsky, R., George, C., Schore, A., Kothe, E.J., Tan, E.S., Greenwood, C.J. and Olsson, C.A., 2021. Early childhood attachment stability and change: A meta-analysis. Attachment & Human Development, 23(6), pp.897-930.

Winnicott, D.W., 1971. Therapeutic consultations in child psychiatry. In Therapeutic consultations in child psychiatry (pp. 410-410).

By Mark Furlong

Certain words have a powerful up-beat vibe. The word community has this cachet. Like others with a bright symbolism, this term can be used to affirm and inspire, but it can also be said with a manipulative effect. For example, commentators can invoke the ideal of community as a ‘spray on solution’ to problems that are deep and complex (Bryson and Mowbray, 1981). Right now, an often heard word is ‘resilience.’ Similar to community, might this term also warrant sceptical attention?

We are repeatedly being told: Hang-in there. In the long run everything will be fine if you remain resilient. Be tough. Bounce back. Do not let yourself be discouraged. Public health and pop psychology spokespersons reiterate this trope. Stories of recovery and rehabilitation, of disaster survival and sporting success, reiterate the same message. In all these accounts resilience is put forward as the punchline, as the motherlode.

The terms might have changed, but there is something familiar in this account. In Victorian era England the notion of ‘character’ held a particularly positive charge. Associated with heroes and aristocrats, with explorers and the high office-bearers of empire, this quality was popularized in Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem If. An evocative ode to the man of character – yes, the image of the brave and indomitable was highly gendered – the poem taught a moral lesson: you are someone of character ‘If you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs’s.’ In this male-stream valorisation of detachment, readers are instructed to perform to a mythic, impossible standard.

There is a shadow side to this narrative. In the event you or I fall over, well, each of us has been shown-up as someone who does not measure up. In not making it, everyone can see we do not have what it takes. This outcome does not mean one is judged to be physically inadequate. Rather, the lack of character / resilience points to a moral failure. One has failed to be responsible. Like blaming the cabin boys for the sinking of the titanic, in this account culpability has been delegated to the lowest level entity.

Re-locating culpability from a fault in the system to the moral failure of individuals is to pull a fast one. Such a sleight of hand, such a grand example of legerdemain, adds an unfair burden onto those who are trying to manage problems that are contextual in their origins, operations and consequences. Such problems – inequality, housing precarity, climate change – are not resolvable if the individual is resilient.

A campaign to have individuals feel they have a moral duty to be unsinkable can be seen as part of a larger platform. Critics claim this campaign aims to govern subjectivity and construct a certain consciousness – a mindset that self-blames rather than is mindful of the bigger picture (Rose and Lentos, 2017). There is also a simpler, and perhaps more radical, criticism. Soraya Chemaly argues in The Resilience Myth (2024) that the valorisation of grit and determination as inherently private attributes not only misses the point, this idea is a misleading and dangerous fallacy.

That all one needs to do is‘be resilient in these tough times’ invites, nay commands, the individual to aspire to be a military entity – a being who is fortified and emotionally cauterized. More, eulogizing resilience as a private attribute furthers a regressive ideal – that one should be self-reliant, an independent being who has no need for others. Rather than seek private solutions based on the false god of autonomy, at Bouverie the commitment is to practices that build local solidarity and the quality of inter-dependence. Bruce Daisley, the ex-Twitter VP, said it well.

True resilience lies in a feeling of togetherness, that we’re united with those around us in a shared endeavour.

At the very least, let’s be cautious when resilience is cited as a wellspring value that promises stand-alone survival. Aligned with the Bouverie Centre’s reason d’etre, I suggest we instead look to the relational spaces that create resilient outcomes and take up our part of those collective spaces.

References

Bryson, L. and Mowbray, M., 1981. ‘Community’: The Spray‐on Solution. Australian journal of social issues,16(4), pp.255-267.

Chemaly, S., 2024. The Resilience Myth: New Thinking on Grit, Strength, and Growth After Trauma. Simon and Schuster.

Rose, N. and Lentzos, F., 2017. Making us resilient: Responsible citizens for uncertain times. In: Trnka, S. and Trundle,C. eds., 2017. Competing responsibilities: the ethics and politics of contemporary life. Duke University Press, pp.27-48.