The relationships between intersubjectivity and attachment are beginning to be explored within the psychoanalytic and developmental literature. We contribute to this comparative effort by exploring the different evolutionary origins of attachment and intersubjectivity. Five interlocking themes are central to this article. First, from an evolutionary perspective, attachment and intersubjectivity serve different functions. The main function of attachment is to seek protection, whereas the main function of intersubjectivity is to communicate, at intuitive and automatic levels, with members of the same species and to facilitate social understanding. Second, to survive in changing and highly competitive environments, an evolutionary strategy emerged among our human ancestors based on developing high levels of cooperation within small bands of hunters and gatherers. In turn, high levels of cooperation and social complexity put selective pressures toward developing effective modes of communication and more complex forms of social understanding (mindreading/ mentalizing/intersubjective abilities). These abilities far surpass mindreading abilities among our closest Great Ape relatives. Third, we provide further evidence for this hypothesis showing that in comparison with other Great Apes, young children show qualitatively different levels of collaboration and altruism. Fourth, we provide an overview of the development of attachment and intersubjective abilities during the first 2 years of life that support the hypothesis of a cooperative origin of intersubjectivity. Fifth,

The clinical management of borderline personality disorder (BPD) commonly employs treatments administered in different settings by different clinicians (e.g., individual psychotherapy and drug prescriptions, or individual and group psychotherapies). The general consensus of clinicians on the importance of using different therapists and different settings simultaneously in treating borderline patients is acknowledged by the guidelines for the treatment of BPD provided by the American Psychiatric Association. This widespread type of clinical practice is not supported, however, by a unifying theoretical model explaining the specific effects of a multiple therapist, multi-setting approach in treating BPD.

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A taxonomy of basic motivational systems (reptilian, mammalian, and neo-mammalian), that emerged in phases during the course of millions of years, is proposed. These different phases did not replace each other, but became reorganized in the brain at different hierarchical levels. It is argued that (a) humans are an ultracooperative species and (b) high degrees of cooperation put strong selective pressures toward the development of sophisticated forms of intersubjective communication. These two developments had cascading effects on human evolution, creating both the conditions upon which humans were able to understand intentions, gestures, emotions, and, ultimately, the minds of others, and the emergence of language and symbolic forms of cultural evolution. Possible evolutionary steps that led to this ultracooperative survival strategy and some of their genetic mechanism, with special emphasis on a multilevel model of selection, are described, and the implications for psychotherapy and psychoanalysis are explored. SUMMARYSocial instincts (motivational systems) among primates can be grouped into five major categories: systems that regulate ritualized dominance and submission displays (dominance hierarchies), systems that regulate care-seeking (attachment) and care-giving behaviors, systems that regulate cooperative behaviors toward members of a troupe, and systems that regulate sexual behaviors. Nonsocial instincts are, of course, also part of mankind's evolutionary heritage. These ancient reptilian systems evolved to maintain physiologic equilibrium, regulate fightflight-freeze responses, activate predatory behaviors, explore the environment, protect territorial boundaries, and reproduce sexually.Although different forms of cooperation exist among primates, dominance hierarchies based on competition are the main form of social organization in nonhuman primates and cooperation is limited to dyadic interactions or small-scale levels of cooperation, such as helping members with close genetic ties or defending territorial boundaries. Helping nonkin members of a group is rare. By comparison, altruistic cooperation in humans is directed at kin and nonkin members alike, and is widespread. Explaining how prosocial form of cooperation evolved among human (hominin) ancestors has been one of the great scientific challenges of modern times. We address this question in two parts. AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO MOTIVATION 865First, we describe four interrelated evolutionary strategies that emerged among hominin ancestors that converged in the modern human species to create ultracooperative adaptive strategies: cooperation in helping raise the young (cooperative breeding), the emergence of enduring sexual bonds, the emergence of shared prosocial norms that supported an egalitarian ethos among nomadic hunter gatherers, and an very delayed sexual maturation and prolonged adolescence (life history strategies) that support cultural learning and the remarkable adaptive flexibility of our species.Second, we turn to formal genetic explana...