Trust in another’s return brackets absence and blocks existential anxiety.

Evidence

Crucial to the intersection of trust with emergent social capabilities on the part of the infant, therefore, is absence. Here, at the heart of the psychological development of trust, we rediscover the problematic of time-space distanciation. For a fundamental feature of the early formation of trust is trust in the caretaker’s return. A feeling of the reliability, yet independent experience, of others—central to a sense of continuity of self-identity—is predicated upon the recognition that the absence of the mother does not represent a withdrawal of love. Trust thus brackets distance in time and space and so blocks off existential anxieties which, if they were allowed to concretise, might become a source of continuing emotional and behavioural anguish throughout life. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 237

Categorization

• XREF: This is the causal heart of the reader’s thesis: Stevens’s trust in Lord Darlington ‘brackets’ the ethical absence, blocking the existential anxiety that would otherwise force moral reckoning. — connects to: Trust reduces complexity by substituting inner certainty for external certainty — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 154; Trust reduces the truster’s complexity while transferring that burden onto the trusted — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 245; The genuine antithesis of basic trust is existential dread, not mere mistrust. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 243 (+5 more)
• QUESTION: If trust brackets absence, does Stevens’s continued faith in Darlington’s integrity during the Nazi period exemplify the blocking of existential anguish that Giddens describes here?

Related

• The genuine antithesis of basic trust is existential dread, not mere mistrust. (similarity 0.83)
• Basic trust must be maintained against perpetual feelings of loss. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Trust reduces complexity by substituting inner certainty for external certainty #expands (0.70) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 154
• Trust reduces the truster’s complexity while transferring that burden onto the trusted #expands (0.60) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 245