It was a 1pm flight out of Albuquerque, and I was in the last row, next to a kid who spilled Coke perilously close to my lap. The boy was about eight. Once we we took off, his mother handed him his schoolwork and he diligently opened it to his math. But when he closed the binder, I was practically jolted out of my seat. Covering the binder, under protective plastic, was a sheet declaring in large bright letters on a black background:

In much smaller type it said The X-Files. And on the bottom was the logo of a major educational publisher.

What a mean message to be distributing to children! This message, by the way, was not presented with a trace of irony. There was no context. It was just blasted onto the retina, to be etched into the brain, a mantra for young minds. This disturbed me deeply.

Back at the office, I tried to track the material to its source. I made at least a dozen calls to the publisher. No one could place it, but one person confirmed there was a licensing deal with The X-Files, and maybe this -- was it a book cover, a small poster? -- was one product. Follow-up calls went unreturned.

Perhaps it was a case of licensing run amok, where dealmakers lost track of what message was actually getting to a young audience. Not that it's a message more suitable for adults, mind you.

Trust is the bedrock of human relationships. Without trust, there can be no meaningful connection to another human being. And without connection to another, we literally fall apart. We get physically sick. We get depressed. And our minds, like the Unabomber's, run away with themselves.

Trust develops early, in the first year of life, researchers tell us. It is an intrinsic part of the emotional bond an infant develops in response to a reliably attentive parent or other caregiver. From this primal interaction, children build a mental representation of relationships that they carry forth into life, one reason most individuals tend to create fairly consistent patterns of relationships.

Those whose early care is unreliable or unpredictable, the thinking goes, grow up handicapped in their ability to trust others. They are sitting ducks for paranoia, a condition whose motto could be that terse dictum, Trust No One.

Sometimes people have their ability to trust wrenched from them. Such is the case with infidelity, observes psychologist Shirley Glass, Ph.D., and that is what makes it so painful. in fact, the shattering of trust through a partner's betrayal makes infidelity a certifiable trauma, right up there with acts of violence. It is the psychic equivalent of rape at gunpoint.

It is possible for couples to salvage a relationship after infidelity, says Dr. Glass (page 34). But it isn't easy. Or quiet. if healing is to take place, it involves a long, slow rebuilding of trust. if distrust seeps into the psyche instead, it is always a barrier to future intimacy

Trust figures into another important story in this issue, about the creation of a new kind of psychological shock troop to head off ethnopolitical way (page 56). An optimistic group of social scientists is attempting to codify what is known about genocide -- under what conditions threat looms, suspicions explode, and trust suddenly, massively collapses into panic, the slaughter of whole population groups, and the mournful spectacle of exodus.

The absence of trust brings bad things. To have ones sense of trust shattered by an unwanted or unexpected event is one thing. To actively teach distrust -- to school kids or to anyone -- is, to me, simply unimaginable. A truly impeachable offense.

(Found in the July/August 1998 issue of Psychology Today)