Life Cycle and Development
Affects at Midlife

Trust is reliance on someone and continuity of provider physical care and affection as well as internal bodily consistency. Consistency of physical care integrated with affection as well as predictable physical functioning builds trust. Consistent neglect yields infant death rather than mistrust—since it refuses an infant the opportunity through time to develop mistrust. Inconsistency constitutes neglect and care in random.

In infancy brain development has not reached intellectual understanding or awareness—an infant is not aware that he is separate from his caregiver or that dependency is not permanent. For a moment transplant the dependency of an infant into a mature mind and body. How does paralyzation of the limbs affect trust and mistrust—when though the body may be still, but the mind is not? An infant has known only helplessness and dependency and perhaps there is bliss within ignorance. But what is dependency in the absence of ignorance?

Trust is a function of the repetition of experience combined with affectionate nurturing to build relationships. Such dissociation facilitates projection; does it also facilitate compartmentalization in some MLCers? What is the proper balance of trust versus mistrust? Life as we know it is not completely predictable. Suppose the universe runs on a perfectly repetitive cycle that takes 1 billion years. Such predictability is outside the context of the span of a single human life. Trust is an assurance, a belief in reliability of action—a consistent and timely feeding schedule—as well as an assurance in nurture or affection; it is the integration of physical and emotional caring.

Mistrust is the absence of trust; it is the result of inconsistencies in needs or expectations. A failed expectation enables mistrust. If there is a seeming guarantee of neglect due to repetition, the absence or neglect itself is expected and realized and rather than mistrust creates a certainty in the negative and a pessimism. Mistrust is a result of random inconsistencies and facilitates suspicion which is a defense mechanism for unfamiliar circumstances when there is no familiarity for comparison to a consistent pattern, trust must be earned through an experience of consistency.

Whether a person's default through life is trust or mistrust depends on the level of adjustment and development within Stage 1 as well as within each subsequent stage. A person who learned healthy levels of trust and mistrust will enter new situations with a balance of healthy skepticism—the benefit of doubt. Though healthy is relative to the geographical, societal and cultural conditions. Healthy suspicions of the present century may have been unhealthy paranoia at other times or within other cultures. The ability to determine the level of healthy skepticism for a given situation is indicative of healthy adjustment. There is place of holding both trust and mistrust while gathering experiential data—withholding final judgment. Paranoia is an imbalance toward unhealthy levels of mistrust.

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