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Anatomy of Love offers an anthropological history of human mating, marriage, and infidelity written from an evolutionary perspective. A primary aim of author Helen Fisher is apparently to demythologize love, sex, adultery, and related topics, instead investigating them as nonjudgmentally as possible from a scientific perspective. She is especially ambitious in writing this book not for experts in her field but for a popular audience of varied backgrounds. That's a tall order for which she is partially successful. In the "To the Reader" preface, the author describes herself as an ethologist who believes that humans have unconscious, inherited behavioral tendencies that influence, but do not determine, our behaviors. I respect her sincerity in stating up front what her viewpoint (some might say "bias", but we all have one) is.
The open-minded, critical reader will gain much from both this book's strengths (it is an engrossing, provocative read) and, as importantly, from appreciating its weaknesses. For me, the challenge in writing this review is explaining why I reduced the five stars I much wanted to award to three stars.
Her overall message is convincingly argued and is this. We humans have an "ancient blueprint for serial monogamy and clandestine adultery [onto which] our culture casts its own design" (p. 310). Social change over the last century, most of all the growth of women in the workplace, suggests that the nature of marriage and the balance of power between men and women is shifting.Read more ›
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I have several of Fisher's books. She writes well and has brought together a copious amount of research from around the world on her subject. A bit dry but highly interesting.
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very enlightening....if one is interested in the relationships between couples then this is good intro into to the psychology of relationships ....good read
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Helen Fisher's "Anatomy of Love" offers an excellent account into the nature of love. Fisher use evolutionary explanations, based on an interdisciplinary approach, to explain how love has evolved into its present form.
The first five chapters are dedicated to modern human relationships. Fisher uses statistics to show modern trends in courting, infatuation, human bonding, adultery, and divorce. Anthropological evidence is used to provide an evolutionary basis of why we go through a four year stage of sex, marriage, and divorce. The last half of the book is dedicated to how these innate tendencies have developed over the eons.
"Anatomy of Love" has several problems. First, it's dreadfully out of date. It was published in 1992 and most of its empirical evidence comes from the 1970's and 1980's. The fields of Anthropology and Geology are constantly changing. The fundamental tenets, like evolution, remain the same. The specifics, like how homo sapiens evolved, change. Fisher's account of ancient man is highly speculative. The probability of this speculation being completely accurate has decreased significantly with modern discoveries.
Second, Fisher constantly uses an evolutionary approach. This is a significant factor in modern behavior. However, at times it seems Fisher overlooks cultural factors in trying to explain why phenomena occur. Her speculative explanations, based on anthropological evidence and modern animals, may not be as important as she claims.
With that said: "Anatomy of Love" is an excellent read that has held up relatively well with time.
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Helen Fisher has done at least two TED [http://www.ted.com] talks - maybe more. You can get a feel for her style of presenting information by watching those videos. This book may have been her doctor thesis. If I recall correctly the last 100 pages were footnotes. The book is factual and informative.
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The subject gets a bit tedious -- she gives far too many examples for the same point. Overall, it's a good treatise for understanding why humans stray.........after all, we are animals first -- intelligent animals second and we will always be guided by our emotions and instincts.
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This is an excellent and very readable book about the phenomena of love, marrige, infidelity, and sexual politics from anthropological perspectives. It is fascinating to see how multiple factors in nature and human interactions-climate changes, anatomical adaptations, settlement and possession of, and need for protection of property, and inventions of major agricultural tools--have formed our behaviors for practical reasons but we often take them for granted or moralize as if they are sacred. (As somebody said "emotions are evolution's executioners".) The book ends with some interesting observations on how our modern society is showing resemblance of the egalitarian hunter-gatherer community. I only wish, coming from my own vanity, that it had a better cover....this one looks like a cheap romance novel...as my friend commented, "the only thing missing is Kim Kardashian."
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This item: Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray
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