“Culture, like jazz, improvises on universal scales. Both the genetic inheritance of the human condition and the range of cultural variations on those universal themes influence what we feel and what feelings we express to others. (…) I think there is no difference between the idea of culture and that of relationship (…) although these words are generally used to apply to different category sizes. Both culture and relationship are about managing otherness; we are always in danger of not belonging. Both culture, in the usual sense of the term, and attachment are ways of establishing the sense of belonging that has been essential to survival in our evolutionary history. From my point of view, every encounter with another is to some degree cross-cultural. This is very evidently the case with someone born into a vastly different social world, growing up speaking a different language but it is also more subtly true with someone growing up next door or even in one’s own family. In large social groups and the most intimate of one to one relationships, otherness is, at best, partially bridged by coordinating arrangements about how each should be with the other, and this includes the range of emotions that can be felt and expressed“ (In: David Pocock – 2010: Emotions as ecosystemic adaptations. In Journal of Family Therapy 32(4) S. 362-378)