Scholars know so much about the importance of early experience--you should too! Every animal has a nest, including humans. What does the nest look like and why does it matter? A 2010 symposium brought together anthropologists, clinical, developmental and neuro-scientists to discuss this question in light of evolution and human development. This is necessarily an interdisciplinary area of study because we have to know our history as social mammals, what optimizes our development in our...

Psychosynthesis considers a human life to move toward self-realization: “developing a committed relationship to the source of our being, a willingness to follow the call or vocation of our deepest truth, no matter the experiences in which we find ourselves” (Firman & Gila, 1997, p. 181). At all stages of life, the individual immanent “I” (non-ego) and the transcendent (Common)Self are connected. Thus, (Common)Self realization involves both personal development and transpersonal...

Is suffering a necessary part of the human condition? Is it species normal for individuals to feel anxious—like impending doom, a fear of intimacy, or a sense of falseness and meaninglessness? John Firman and Ann Gila, following the psychosynthesis tradition of Roberto Assagioli (1973), say no, this is not part of being human. The “anxious estrangement” that most people today feel is not normal but unnatural (The Primal Wound, 1997, p. 2). It is the result of a violation in early life that...