The quintessence of a therapeutic environment

The purpose of this paper is to describe the necessary primary emotional development experiences for healthy personality formation.

The paper is a critical synthesis of psychoanalytic theory.

Five experiences are judged necessary for health “primary emotional development”: attachment, containment, communication, inclusion and agency. These can be deliberately recreated in therapeutic environments to form a structure for “secondary emotional development”.

The ways in which these qualities of a psychosocial environment can be produced are described.

Failure to recognise the importance of these qualities of an environment can cause unhealthy, or frankly toxic, psychosocial environments in various settings.

This is the author's original work, and has relevance for all psychosocial environments.