A child

Need

A baby cries. Someone lifts the child, checks the need, and softens the voice. No one asks the child to explain the feeling first.

An adult

Need

An adult’s distress may arrive as silence, anger, confusion, or withdrawal. A boundary may still be required. The person has not become less human.

Not every child is met this way. Many adults already know this care. The scene is not a history of a kinder age.

In one implicit test, an infant face was an easier positive cue than an adult face. In another, rounder infant faces drew higher ratings of wanting to care. Adult faces were not in that second test. Neither study watched anyone care for a distressed adult.

If we still know how to be gentle with a frightened child, what might help us recognize the frightened person who is not small, and not appealing?

What does it mean to become a person, rather than to be proved tender?

Carl JungFace to Face, BBC, 1959, John Freeman. This sitting uses a public upload. The film belongs to the BBC. It is not evidence from an experiment.

What is the relationship between tenderness and wholeness?

Count the letters if you want to check the sum. Full reduction runs A as 1 through I as 9, then begins again. Reverse reduction starts at the other end and stays a single digit. The same number is a correspondence. It does not cause a life, and it does not predict one.

TENDERNESSFull reduction
  1. T2
  2. E5
  3. N5
  4. D4
  5. E5
  6. R9
  7. N5
  8. E5
  9. S1
  10. S1

42

WHOLENESSReverse reduction
  1. W4
  2. H1
  3. O3
  4. L6
  5. E4
  6. N4
  7. E4
  8. S8
  9. S8

42

Sources
  1. The plates use the reduction counted on this door. TENDERNESS, full reduction: 2+5+5+4+5+9+5+5+1+1. WHOLENESS, reverse reduction: 4+1+3+6+4+4+4+8+8. Both sums are 42. The correspondence opened the inquiry. It is not a finding from an experiment.
  2. Carl Jung, interview by John Freeman, Face to Face, BBC, 1959. The film belongs to the BBC.
  3. Vincenzo Paolo Senese, Simona De Falco, Marc H. Bornstein, Andrea Caria, Simona Buffolino, and Paola Venuti, “Human Infant Faces Provoke Implicit Positive Affective Responses in Parents and Non-Parents Alike,” PLOS ONE (2013). An implicit test. Not observed care.
  4. Melanie L. Glocker, Daniel D. Langleben, Kosha Ruparel, James W. Loughead, Ruben C. Gur, and Norbert Sachser, “Baby Schema in Infant Faces Induces Cuteness Perception and Motivation for Caretaking in Adults,” Ethology (2009). Ratings of infant faces. Adult faces were not tested. No caregiving was watched.