Crafty Listening

Human Givens

Human Givens theory states that, if we are to prevent mental distress the environment must meet certain Emotional Needs. These include:

• Security – safe territory and an environment which full maturity and development

• Attention (to give and receive it) – a form of "mental nutrition"

• Sense of autonomy and control – having volition to make responsible choices

• Being emotionally connected to others

• Feeling part of a wider community

• Friendship and intimacy with someone who is accepting of the total person, flaws included

• Privacy – opportunity to reflect and consolidate experience

• Sense of status within social groupings

• Sense of competence and achievement

• Meaning and purpose

Human Resources

Under the Human Givens theory, the mental resources "nature gave us" to meet innate needs include:

• The ability to develop complex long term memory

• The ability to build rapport, empathise and connect with others

• Imagination, and the ability to focus attention away from emotion and use language to solve problems more creatively and objectively

• A conscious, rational mind that can understand itself and question, analyse and plan

• The ability to understand the world unconsciously through metaphorical pattern matching

• The ability to dream, which "preserves the integrity of our genetic inheritance" every night by metaphorically defusing expectations held in the autonomic arousal system because they were not acted out the previous day.

These can be thought of as inbuilt patterns – biological templates – that continually interact and, in undamaged individuals, seek their natural fulfillment in the world.