Immigrant families currently face a disturbing variation of the horrific separation of parents and children imposed officially from April through June of 2018 but continuing through the fall of 2019 under the government’s “zero tolerance” policy. Now a federal judge has ruled that all migrant children must be released from detention centers because of coronavirus. But immigration officials are not expected to allow parents to leave with them. Anyone with a hand in such cruel and heartless policy should be required to view the classic still-face experiment. More powerfully than any words, it shows how a parent provides an infant’s ability to literally hold themselves together. Separations beyond their ability to tolerate them threaten their very sense of existence.

Stress and adversity are ubiquitous. Adversity becomes “trauma” when it is compounded by a sense that one’s mind is alone. When children grow up in an environment characterized by lack of curiosity about their experience, where they do not feel listened to by their primary caregivers, epistemic mistrust, or hypervigilence, along with a sense of social isolation, develops. An individual then faces what Fonagy terms an “epistemic dilemma, “ characterized by cycling between hypervigilence and excessive credulity
For a person facing this dilemma, a leader who speaks with absolute certainty, leaving no doubt that he or she is the one to whom we should listen, has power to protect against the emotionally intolerable experience of being alone. In this state, feelings can override facts. This developmental model helps to make sense of our current political situation. In a democracy, when a large population feels fundamentally disconnected and unheard, filled with mistrust yet also vulnerable to emotionally driven messages, it makes all of us vulnerable.