…I started to like forgetting what I was taught in childhood.

Jean Liedloff

Jean Liedloff’s bold book The Continuum Concept offers a new perspective on evolution, progress, and natural parenting. Well, not so new—the book was written in the 1970s—but as always, the world needs a hundred years to accept or even become acquainted with the unconventional. Well, I mean unconventional for the modern Western world.

After learning about it in the Russian version (and Russians are known for their absurdly adapted translations; in the original, russian How to Raise a Happy Child sounds like The Continuum Concept), I was skeptical, expecting any kind of content, just not the kind it turned out to be.

The Rationality of Evolution

So, Jean Liedloff believes that we traded rational evolution for questionable progress:

What evolution conscientiously creates, introducing diversity of forms and adapting them more precisely to our needs, progress destroys by introducing norms and conditions that do not meet the true needs of people. All that progress can do is replace ‘correct’ behavior with less meaningful behavior. It replaces the complex with the simple and more adaptable— with less adaptable. As a result, progress disrupts the balance of the complex interrelated factors both inside and outside the system. Thus, evolution brings stability, while progress brings vulnerability.

Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff

Amen. I just think that everything always develops the way it should. The author, for example, says that no animal species has competition among them, and that humanity loses its wholeness by competing within the species. But I say that maybe what makes Homo sapiens unique is that each representative of the species has the right not to be part of a herd but to stand alone. Because even if the human herd acts together a hundred times, I am firmly convinced that it’s all for nothing if each person doesn’t understand why it’s all happening, and perhaps competition itself allows us to separate the egg from the shell. However, if we think further, this has already served its purpose, and we are entering the era of partnership.

I share the religion of needs, articulated in this book in unison with my views, and I have another religion: of individuality. Needs define, explain, and guide individuality because, yes, there are basic, somewhat similar needs for everyone, but there are individual needs that make us who we are. And I wouldn’t be so quick to explain the existence of half of human professions with unsatisfied needs from traumatic childhoods, as Jean Liedloff dramatizes—perhaps evolution is a bit more cunning than she thinks. And Deleuze would agree with me.

The Lifestyle of the Ecuana Tribe

If this were just a book about the lifestyle of the Ecuana tribe, which the author observed in several targeted expeditions, it would be a great book in which everyone could find practical value. But the author takes it upon herself to draw parallels with the “civilized” world, and this is, a priori, doomed to failure because why compare the incomparable and seriously talk about the utopian. If we lived differently… we would live differently. I put the word “civilized” in quotation marks because the “Indians” described by Liedloff are also a civilization, and yes, we can learn from each other, but only time will tell whose methods are better—if you don’t try, you won’t know.

There is much of value in this book, but the hyperbole the author uses in trying to explain how one shouldn’t treat a child rather repels than achieves the desired effect, at least in the case of people sensitive and resistant to manipulation. Something similar made the viewing of The Passion of the Christ unbearable: the real message, which the authors didn’t even plan to convey in the film, was hidden behind excessive psychologically manipulative realism or rather naturalism.

I really liked the idea of the initial “correctness” of each person; maybe soon evolution will give us the strength to resist a society that always thinks something is wrong with us? 😉

I recommend reading this book as a source of inspiration and food for thought.

Some Quotes

• Most of our instinctual knowledge has been destroyed quite recently. Modern science dissects it into pieces, analyzing it with clever theories and “looking at it under a microscope,” while this knowledge only makes sense in its inseparable wholeness. We trust less and less in our innate ability to feel what is best for us, and when making decisions, we rely on intellect, which has never really understood our true needs.
• These two types of expectation are completely different. Innate expectations are unconditional as long as they are reliably satisfied, while acquired expectations, which do not align with innate ones, leave a bitter taste of disappointment and manifest as doubt, suspicion, and fear that future events will bring more trouble. The worst manifestation of this mismatch is irreversible resignation to life conditions that contradict human nature.
• When subsequent events do not match the nature of the experience that shaped her behavior, a person tends to influence events to make them resemble the initial experience, even if it is not in her best interests. If she is used to loneliness, she will subconsciously arrange everything so that she feels similar loneliness. All efforts on her part or the circumstances will encounter resistance from the person trying to preserve her stability. A person has a tendency to maintain even a familiar level of anxiety. If it suddenly turns out that there is no reason to worry, it can provoke much deeper and sharper anxiety. For one who is used to living “on the edge of a cliff,” complete safety and calmness become as unbearable as falling into the abyss. In all cases, there is a tendency to maintain what should have been full well-being, which was embedded in childhood.
• For a person with a full childhood, and thus one living a full life, losing a constant partner at any age is not a loss of “everything in the world.” His or her selfhood is not an empty vessel whose contents or motivation depend on another. A fully mature adult will grieve, perhaps step away from work for a while, and reorient his or her energies to adapt to new circumstances.
• The child’s sense of independence and emotional maturity begins with multiple experiences during the “handheld period.” A child can only become independent of the mother by going through a stage of complete dependence on her. At this stage, she is required to behave correctly, provide the child with the experience of the “handheld period” (i.e., being carried in her arms), and ensure a transition to other stages. But it is impossible to get rid of the trauma caused by a mother who did not follow the continuum. The need for her attention will stay with the person for life.
• The uneven development of the child (in one direction, they move forward, while in another, they fall behind, waiting for the opportunity to receive the unfulfilled experience) leads to the splitting of their desires: in all of their actions, they want to be the center of attention; they cannot fully focus on a given task while part of their soul still yearns for the carefree existence in their mother’s arms, who solves all their problems. They cannot fully apply their growing strength and skills if part of them still wants to be helpless in their arms. Any effort somewhat contradicts the constantly present but hidden desire to receive everything without effort, as happens with a mother-loved infant.
• If parents, as they think, guide their child in the best direction for them (or themselves), they pay for it with their integrity.
• A child’s behavior is largely determined by what is expected of them. An adult guardian forces the child to comply, thereby undermining the self-preservation mechanism. The child stops feeling secure in the world around them and unconsciously follows an absurd instruction to harm themselves. If the child wakes up in the hospital and finds out they were hit by a car, they won’t be too surprised, since the nanny often told them that this is how it would end.
• Self-hatred, which arises from the unfulfilled sense of correctness in childhood, is the basis for the incomprehensible hatred toward others.
• The whole endeavor makes sense only when you hold the child in your arms and feel that it is the right thing to do, not when someone simply told you that you must do it.
• The child expects to become a participant in the life of an occupied person from birth, to be in constant physical contact with them, and to witness the situations they will have to face in adult life.