Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered [Hardcover]

Bruce D. Perry (Author), Maia Szalavitz (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

An inside look at the power of empathy: Born for Love is an unprecedented exploration of how and why the brain learns to bond with others—and a stirring call to protect our children from new threats to their capacity to love

From birth, when babies' fingers instinctively cling to those of adults, their bodies and brains seek an intimate connection, a bond made possible by empathy—the ability to love and to share the feelings of others.

In this provocative book, renowned child psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry and award-winning science journalist Maia Szalavitz interweave research and stories from Perry's practice with cutting-edge scientific studies and historical examples to explain how empathy develops, why it is essential for our development into healthy adults, and how it is threatened in the modern world.

Perry and Szalavitz show that compassion underlies the qualities that make society work—trust, altruism, collaboration, love, charity—and how difficulties related to empathy are key factors in social problems such as war, crime, racism, and mental illness. Even physical health, from infectious diseases to heart attacks, is deeply affected by our human connections to one another.

As Born for Love reveals, recent changes in technology, child-rearing practices, education, and lifestyles are starting to rob children of necessary human contact and deep relationships—the essential foundation for empathy and a caring, healthy society. Sounding an important warning bell, Born for Love offers practical ideas for combating the negative influences of modern life and fostering positive social change to benefit us all.

About the Author

Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., is the senior fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy (www.ChildTrauma.org), a not-for-profit organization based in Houston that is dedicated to improving the lives of high-risk children, and he is an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago. He is the author, with Maia Szalavitz, of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, a bestselling book based on his work with maltreated children.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (April 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006165678X
• ISBN-13: 978-0061656781
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #10,626 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

  #47 in	Books > Health, Mind & Body > Psychology & Counseling > Child Psychology
  #77 in	Books > Health, Mind & Body > Psychology & Counseling > Social Psychology & Interactions
  #34 in	Books > Health, Mind & Body > Mental Health > Emotions

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Elegantly explaining that it's more than just genes....., April 20, 2010

By	J. Weiland "jj_weiland" (Fargo, ND USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered (Hardcover)

So much is right about the content and message of this book that I will leave it up to the reader to obtain a copy and find out for themselves.

"Born for Love" follows on the heals of the successful "The Boy who was Raised as a Dog" also penned by the Perry/Szalavitz duo. The latest book draws out several concepts that desperately need to be understood and expressed by all current and future caregivers of children. First is the fact that much of the "learning" that occurs between birth and three years of age often will not be consciously remembered, but will nevertheless influence, often strongly, one's behavior beyond childhood. This can flare up especially acutely when the adult with an abusive past finds themselves struggling to care for a child themselves. The second is the general misconception that "intelligence" allows one to overcome the psychological scars of abuse. A case in point is presented in the book of Ryan, a boy who used his intelligence to excel in his studies and in his social sphere without revealing or being able to repair his internal, disconnected emotional world, until it erupted in a cold, violent crime. For most survivors of abuse emerging toward healthier lives, recovery relies more on supportive relationships than intelligence. Third is the concept of early relationships as a "template" for future relationships. Indeed, just as half of each parent's DNA served as a template (the actual word use to describe DNA copying) for DNA found in their child, would it not be parsimonious for parental behavior to provide a template upon which the child builds his/her own emotional and behavioral repertoire? And just as mutation in DNA can lead either to new deleterious or beneficial traits, so too can the novel experience during childhood become epigenetically and neuronally "fixed" (though apparently reversibly) in ways leading to great resilience, at one extreme, due to supportive caregiving or marked instability, at the opposite end of the spectrum, due to early maltreatment. The authors further correctly emphasize the importance of kinship in child rearing with their reminder that to "be of a kind" and to "be kind" are both derived from "kin". This latter point is of concern with the increasing time spent by children in care situations not involving those of their immediate or extended family.

Given the excellent information and references presented in "Born to Love", the authors nevertheless neglect some crucial issues pertaining to the target of human empathy. As a serious foray into the developmental roots of this ability, I found the lens focused too narrowly on human-to-human interdependence. Many writing from within the 'ecopsychology' tradition are correct with their insistence that relationships beginning in the womb subsequently expand to include human caretakers and the immediate natural world around them, and finally develop into rich relationships with human and non-human alike. Thus, the targets of empathy must be encouraged, as early as possible, to include the non-human as well as the human. Children's fascination with animals is a clue to this yearning. As the authors indicate, our evolutionary history was characterized by small tribal groups, a mixture of ages involved in care taking (although with some adults always present), and a large amount of time spent immersed in the natural world even during interactions with other humans. Exclusively human-focused attempts to engender empathy will likely dead-end as it perpetuates the perceived divide between things that we must care for and nurture and those that we can wantonly consume or discard. "Born for Love" touches briefly on two cultural/social paradigms to exemplify greater relationship connections than those found in an 'average' Western culture--that of Iceland and of first nation indigenous tribes near Winnipeg, Canada. Because the historical tradition of many indigenous peoples fosters empathy not only with humanity, but with the "other" (the non-human) as well, a more fundamental, less schizophrenic interdependence is cultivated and often realized, even as it conflicts with agro-urban societies. So the latter culture gets my vote as the one more important to emulate.

If the reader finds this thread to be of interest, couple the reading of "Born for Love" with that of Jean Liedloff's "The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost". And for the adventurous, nothing cuts to the core of our societal problems dating back to prehistory like Paul Shepard's "Nature and Madness" and many of the concepts formulated by Daniel Quinn. One will find abundant ideas and guidelines for a movement towards greater sanity within these writings.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's not a must read...it's a please read!, June 7, 2010

By	Toni Detherage (Lawrence, Kansas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered (Hardcover)

As both a parent and a professional who works with families, I can't say how appreciative I am to these authors for writing a book that takes the very clinical and technical issues of trauma and human development and somehow turns healing processes into something the rest of us can really understand how to do. They have a remarkable way of linking the human story to the greater need to understand the long term impacts of complex trauma and the developmental barriers associated with trauma and neglect. If a book could shine, this one would.

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommend this book - developing empathy is essential!, September 2, 2010

By	Kathy Slattengren (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered (Hardcover)

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in deepening their understanding of the development empathy in children. Perry and Szalavitz weave case studies and research into building an explanation for how empathy develops or fails to develop. They show that although children are born with the capacity to have empathy, it only develops under certain conditions. As a parent educator, I can use these stories to explain the critical elements parents contribute in developing their children's empathy.

Empathy is at the heart of caring communities. Without empathy, behaviors like bullying will continue to plague our children. This book provides the light to see how to build a better world starting with our children.