Please join our Kindred community in recognizing and celebratng of the life of Colwyn Trevarthen, Professor (Emeritus) of Child Psychology and Psychobiology at The University of Edinburgh, who passed on July 1, 2024 at the age of 93.
“Colwyn Trevarthen’s work and life contributed to the insights of the Evolved Nest, particularly in understanding the neurobiology of early social interactions and the importance of relational attunement in child development,” said Darcia Narvaez, Kindred World president and co-founder of the Evolved Nest Initiative.
“Trevarthen found that newborns show an ‘intrinsic motive pulse,’ expecting to interact body to body in a form of purposeful ‘communicative musicality’. The self is formed from an integration of body movement, communality, aesthetics and morality from what he called companionship care. These characteristics very much fit the Indigenous perspective of Life where common sense and a Common Self emerge from the dynamic responsive company of others,” said Narvaez. “I am honored to join a global community of scientists and researchers to honor his life.”
In the Evolved Nest’s films and Learning Center, we discover our current Cycle of Competitive Detachment can be transformed into a Cycle of Cooperative Companionship through our evolutionary pathway to wellbeing. Trevarthen is credited with creating the phrase, Cycle of Cooperative Companionship, which can be found in Kindred’s New Story Glossary. He is also credited with how the Evolved Nest is presented for babies: companionship attachment.
Darcia Narvaez will speak at Trevarthen’s public Memorial Conference in Edinburgh on March 21, 2025. She has also contributed a chapter, with other world leaders in developmental psychology, neuroscience, education and psychiatry to the forthcoming collection, Intersubjective Minds: Rhythm, Sympathy, and Human Being.
Suzanne Zeedyk, Kindred World board member, Connected Baby founder, and a Trevarthen Memorial Conference organizer shares, “Colwyn Trevarthen changed the way the scientific community sees babies. That means Colwyn changed the way humanity itself is understood. I have spent more than a decade trying to help the wider public share in the discoveries Colwyn and his colleagues made. I know we must each leave this planet at some point, but the planet is truly a poorer place without the wisdom and humour of Colwyn Trevarthen. The energy around this Memorial Conference demonstrates that many others feel similarly to me.”
Read more below about the life and contributions of Colwyn Trevarthen; learn more about the forthcoming collection; and watch his presentation at the University of Notre Dame Symposium hosted by Darcia Narvaez in 2010.
About Colwyn Trevarthen
A distinguished scholar and innovative researcher in the fields of developmental psychology and psychobiology, Colwyn’s pioneering work in infancy research and early childhood development has had a profound and lasting influence on multiple disciplines, including early education, arts and psychological therapies, and brain science. He belongs to a generation of brilliant infancy researchers (from the 1960s and onwards) whose findings from empirical research (using microanalytic and other innovative video techniques to capture real life data) brought about a paradigm shift across the human sciences and challenging fixed ideas and theories, bringing change to health and education practices from many disciplines. A New Zealander and Scot, he lived for most of his life in Scotland, a country for which he felt a special affinity, with its nature, its people and its rich culture, often drawing inspiration from leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Read his full obituary in Sage Journals.
About Intersubjective Minds
This collection of papers from world leaders in developmental psychology, neuroscience, music, education and psychiatry consolidates the lifetime work of Emeritus Professor Colwyn Trevarthen, FRSE. Spanning research from the 1960s to the present, Trevarthen’s contributions to science have changed our understanding of infancy, neuroscience, education and musicality. The present collection of papers from these diverse fields describes current issues, principles and perspectives for working practice on the role of intersubjectivity in early human life, its contribution to health and learning, and therefore its role in scientific understanding of the fundamentals of the human mind. By bringing together scholars, scientists, medical and educational practitioners, this book serves as a landmark for the field of intersubjectivity and celebrates Trevarthen’s 93rd birthday.
Learn more about the collection here.
About the Notre Dame Symposium October 2010
An international collection of renowned scholars from several disciplines presented research on the psychological, anthropological, and biological conditions related to the optimal brain and body system development in human beings. Experts’ presentations reexamined the influence of early experience on child outcomes, and how human beings’ emotions develop and function. There is growing evidence that particular childrearing practices positively or negatively impact brain development, and evidence that the ways we are rearing our children today are not the ways humans are designed to thrive. The symposium was organized and hosted by Darcia Narvaez, PhD.
Watch Professor Trevarthen’s Presentation
Watch Suzanne Zeedyk’s interview with Trevarthen (Zeedyk is a Kindred World board member)