“Guilt is awful,” Sontag said, poignantly—and yes, it is. But there is no culpability where there is no choice. No conceivable condition exists under which a human being has less agency or fewer options than in infancy and early childhood. The imperative to survive overrides everything, and that survival depends on the maintenance of attachment, at whatever cost to authenticity. This is why so many childhoods, particularly in a culture that both breeds stress and feeds on it, are marked by a tense standoff between the two, where the outcome is predictable and the consequences are lifelong.
