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International Childhood Trauma Conference
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The seven fundamental needs of a thriving life
Plenary

Plenary

4:00 pm

22 August 2025

Plenary 2

Closing Plenary - Dan Siegel

Themes

ICTC

Talk Description
By exploring the key needs that we have from birth onward, we can understand how trauma impacts our capacity to thrive. The first core three needs are Agency, Bonding, and Certainty. Sub-cortical neural networks involved in these needs create a “vector” that may underlie how personality emerges from temperament early in life. This view enables us to understand how sub-optimal attachment may intensify temperament in the pathway toward personality. We can see this in a “PDP” view of our lives: Patterns of Developmental Pathways. Trauma makes these PDPs less integrated and therefore more prone to chaos and rigidity. A second set of three needs developing later are ETC: Esteem, Trust, and Control. These secondary needs are also challenged with trauma and are a focus of therapeutic interventions. A seventh, overall need is for Wholeness: a sense of coherence, being grounded, feeling complete. When the first six needs are fulfilled, a sense of Wholeness begins to emerge. We will explore this exciting new view of how temperament, attachment, and personality intertwine in response to trauma and how to use this PDP framework for the healing of trauma.
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