From the series \u201cThe Anatomy of Emotional Life\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In a simple experiment, a two-month-old baby sits face to face with his mother. She smiles at him. He responds. She marvels, he marvels. A small, natural dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then the mother receives an instruction: make your face expressionless. No smile, no worry, nothing. Just a blank face \u2014 physically present, but emotionally absent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The baby tries everything he knows. Smiles. Sounds. Gestures. He reaches his tiny hand toward her. He tries from a different angle. He persists. And after a few minutes \u2014 he withdraws. He slumps. He cries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This experiment, documented by Ed Tronick<\/a> in the 1970s and replicated hundreds of times since, is called the still-face.<\/em><\/strong> And it shows something that developmental psychology has confirmed in countless ways: to form an emotional life, a person needs another person who responds.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just food, warmth, and physical safety. A face that reflects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All basic emotions are present from the first days of life. Newborns feel discomfort, fear, joy, curiosity. The body reacts. The face contracts or opens. A cry carries nuances that mothers recognize instinctively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But feeling an emotion is not the same as knowing you feel it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The capacity to recognize, name, and use emotions \u2014 to transform them from biological reactions into consciously lived experiences \u2014 does not come with birth. It is built. Slowly, in thousands of small exchanges, in contact with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A child who cries and receives an attentive response \u2014 a face that shows concern, a voice that says I hear you, I'm coming<\/em> \u2014 receives not just comfort. They receive a mirror. Their agitated body meets another body that receives and regulates it. And in this encounter, the emotion becomes, gradually, something that can be known.<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Donald Winnicott, British pediatrician and psychoanalyst, placed at the center of his thinking this image: the mirroring mother. When the baby looks at her face, they see a reflection of their own inner state. Not perfectly \u2014 good enough.<\/em>Often enough, in enough ways, for the child to begin building a sense of their own inner life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perfection is not what's needed. Availability is.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Today we know that our nervous system doesn't regulate itself only from within. It also regulates itself together with other nervous systems. A calm voice, a face that remains present, a person who can bear what we feel become, for a time, support for our own nervous system. Only later is this capacity internalized and becomes self-regulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth \u2014 whom we met already in Article 3 \u2014 showed that the attachment pattern formed in early childhood is not a character trait. It is an emotional strategy \u2014 an adaptive response to the available emotional environment. The child who cannot count on emotional responsiveness from their caregiver does not simply become \"more independent.\" They adjust their expectations. And with them, their relationship with their own emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some learn that emotions disrupt relationships \u2014 so they compress them. Others learn that emotions are the only way to be seen \u2014 so they amplify them. Not choices, but adaptations. Just as logical as any other response to an environment.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the previous article, we saw that some emotions remain in the body. But for them to be released, there must first be someone \u2014 or, at times, ourselves \u2014 who can recognize them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peter Fonagy, British psychologist and psychoanalyst, introduced a concept that illuminates everything we've discussed in this series: mentalization<\/strong> \u2014 the capacity to understand that you and others have inner states that influence behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It sounds obvious. It isn't.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mentalization means being able to sit across from an angry person and ask: what is she feeling right now? Where does this reaction come from?<\/em> Instead of automatically responding to the surface of the behavior. It means being able to look inward and say: I feel something. I don't know exactly what. But it's there.<\/em> And to tolerate that uncertainty without collapsing or pushing it away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A simple example: a child knocks over a glass of water. A parent can see \u2014 you've made a mess again<\/em> \u2014 or can see \u2014 I think he got scared and doesn't understand what happened himself.<\/em> This is the pivot of mentalization: asking what lies inside the other person, not just what appears on the surface of their behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fonagy showed that mentalization develops in secure attachment \u2014 in contexts where the caregiver treats the child as a being with their own mind, their own emotions, their own perspectives. Where the child's behavior is not interpreted as manipulation or caprice, but as the expression of an inner state that deserves attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that without this, emotional capacity remains only partially built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are people who, when asked what do you feel right now?<\/em>, sincerely answer: I don't know.<\/em> Not as avoidance. Not as protection. But because, truly, they don't know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n American psychiatrist Peter Sifneos<\/a> named this experience alexithymia<\/strong> \u2014 from the Greek: the absence of words for emotions. Not an inability to feel, but an inability to consciously access what the body feels. A disconnection between the physiological signal and conscious experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alexithymia is not a manufacturing defect. It is, most often, an adaptation. A response to an environment where emotions were not reflected, named, or tolerated. The brain, facing an emotionally unavailable environment, can build exactly this distance \u2014 as a survival strategy. The bodily signals exist. But the bridge to awareness was never built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several people who have followed this series have told me versions of the same sentence: now I understand why it was hard for me to name what I felt. Not because I wasn't feeling. But because no one showed me how.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This may be the most important idea in this article: the absence of emotional vocabulary is not a character trait. It is an absence of formation.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The nervous system remains plastic far longer than we long believed. Not in the same way as in the first years of life \u2014 but plastic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n New relationships can rebuild what early experiences did not offer. Not through therapy alone \u2014 though therapy can be a valuable space for this. But through any relationship where emotions are received, named, and tolerated. A friend who doesn't change the subject when you say you're sad. A partner who can be curious rather than defensive. A space where the words for what you feel are offered before you've known them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emotional vocabulary can be built at any time. And with each new word, the possibilities for conscious experience grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I observe this in my work with people. There are moments when someone discovers they have a word for something they've felt their whole life without recognizing it. It isn't an intellectual discovery. It's something more physical than that. Something opens \u2014 as if an interior space that was blocked finally receives air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You have completed an entire series about emotional life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You began by understanding that we don't always feel what we think we feel \u2014 that between sensation, emotion, and feeling there are important differences. You saw that emotions are not enemies, but messengers with precise functions. That emotional intelligence doesn't mean control, but presence. That the very concept of \"emotion\" is less than two hundred years old. That some emotions remain in the body because the cycle could not complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now appears perhaps the most important conclusion: emotional life does not come ready-built. It forms in encounter with others, in time \u2014 and continues to form throughout the whole of a life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps the most important lesson of this series is this: we are not born knowing how to carry our emotions. We learn. And what could be learned in one relationship can continue to be learned in another, even much later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you feel you want to explore more of what is happening in your emotional life, there is a space for that.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n What is the still-face experiment?<\/strong> A classic experiment in developmental psychology, conducted by Ed Tronick: the baby's mother receives the instruction to make her face expressionless for a few minutes. The baby tries to re-establish contact, fails, and withdraws. The experiment demonstrates that the emotional responsiveness of the caregiver is not a luxury \u2014 it is a fundamental developmental need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What does \"good enough\" mean in Winnicott?<\/strong> Donald Winnicott introduced the concept of the \"good enough\" mother \u2014 not perfect, but sufficiently emotionally available. He showed that it is not parental perfection that forms an emotionally healthy child, but sufficiently consistent and attentive presence. Small ruptures followed by repair are actually useful \u2014 they show the child that relationships can survive difficulties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is mentalization?<\/strong> A concept of Peter Fonagy: the capacity to understand that you and others have inner states \u2014 emotions, thoughts, desires \u2014 that influence behavior. It develops in secure attachment and is the foundation of emotional regulation, empathy, and healthy relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is alexithymia?<\/strong> The term was introduced by Peter Sifneos: the absence of words for emotions. Not an inability to feel, but a difficulty in consciously accessing what the body feels. Most often it is an adaptation to an emotional environment that did not reflect or tolerate emotions \u2014 not an innate deficit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can emotional capacity be recovered in adulthood?<\/strong> Yes. The nervous system remains plastic, and new relationships can rebuild what early experiences did not offer. Emotional vocabulary can be formed at any age \u2014 and with each new concept or word acquired, the possibilities for conscious experience grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We feel what we think we feel?<\/mark><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Emotions are not our enemies<\/mark><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Emotional intelligence \u2014 more than self\u2011control<\/mark><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nWe feel from birth. But we don't know what we feel.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The first school<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The capacity to know that you feel<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
When you don't know what you feel<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
What can still be formed<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The end and the beginning<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nFrequently asked questions<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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