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A General Theory of Love Paperback – January 9, 2001
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This original and lucid account of the complexities of love and its essential role in human well-being draws on the latest scientific research. Three eminent psychiatrists tackle the difficult task of reconciling what artists and thinkers have known for thousands of years about the human heart with what has only recently been learned about the primitive functions of the human brain.
A General Theory of Love demonstrates that our nervous systems are not self-contained: from earliest childhood, our brains actually link with those of the people close to us, in a silent rhythm that alters the very structure of our brains, establishes life-long emotional patterns, and makes us, in large part, who we are. Explaining how relationships function, how parents shape their child’s developing self, how psychotherapy really works, and how our society dangerously flouts essential emotional laws, this is a work of rare passion and eloquence that will forever change the way you think about human intimacy.
- Print length274 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateJanuary 9, 2001
- Dimensions5.15 x 0.59 x 7.99 inches
- ISBN-100375709223
- ISBN-13978-0375709227
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Bold. . . . Eminently readable. . . . Convincingly connects love and biology." --The Washington Post Book World
"A lovely, furious book. . . . It puts love right where we're not used to finding it--in the company of physics and economics as a suitable object of study. . . . Comparisons to Oliver Sacks and Lewis Thomas become inevitable." --San Francisco Chronicle
"In elegant prose . . . [the authors] argue why we need a culture attuned to the ways of the heart." –Entertainment Weekly
From the Back Cover
A General Theory of Love draws on the latest scientific research to demonstrate that our nervous systems are not self-contained: from earliest childhood, our brains actually link with those of the people close to us, in a silent rhythm that alters the very structure of our brains, establishes life-long emotional patterns, and makes us, in large part, who we are. Explaining how relationships function, how parents shape their child's developing self, how psychotherapy really works, and how our society dangerously flouts essential emotional laws, this is a work of rare passion and eloquence that will forever change the way you think about human intimacy.
About the Author
Fari Amini, M.D. is a professor of psychiatry at the UCSF School of Medicine. Born and raised in Iran, he graduated from medical school at UCSF and has served on the faculty there for thirty-three years. Dr. Amini is married, has six children, and lives in Ross, California.
Richard Lannon, M.D. is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCSF School of Medicine. In 1980, Dr. Lannon founded the Affective Disorders Program at UCSF, a pioneering effort to integrate psychological concepts with the emerging biology of the brain. Dr. Lannon is married and the father of two; he lives in Greenbrae, California.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Answering these questions, laying bare the heart's deepest secrets, is this book's aim. Since the dawn of our species, human beings in every time and place have contended with an unruly emotional core that behaves in unpredicted and confusing ways. Science has been unable to help them. The Western world's first physician, Hippocrates, proposed in 450 B.C. that emotions emanate from the brain. He was right-but for the next twenty-five hundred years, medicine could offer nothing further about the details of emotional life. Matters of the heart were matters only for the arts-literature, song, poetry, painting, sculpture, dance. Until now.
The past decade has seen an explosion of scientific discoveries about the brain, the leading edge of a revolution that promises to change the way we think about ourselves, our relationships, our children, and our society. Science can at last turn its penetrating gaze on humanity's oldest questions. Its revelations stand poised to shatter more than a few modern assumptions about the inner workings of love.
Traditional versions of the mind hold that Passion is a troublesome remnant from humanity's savage past, and the intellectual subjugation of emotion is civilization's triumph. Logical but dubious derivations follow: emotional maturity is synonymous with emotional restraint. Schools can teach children missing emotional skills just as they impart the facts of geometry or history. To feel better, outthink your stubborn and recalcitrant heart. So says convention.
In this book, we demonstrate that where intellect and emotion clash, the heart often has the greater wisdom. In a pleasing turnabout, science-Reason's right hand-is proving this so. The brain's ancient emotional architecture is not a bothersome animal encumbrance. Instead, it is nothing less than the key to our lives. We live immersed in unseen forces and silent messages that shape our destinies. As individuals and as a culture, our chance for happiness depends on our ability to decipher a hidden world that revolves-invisibly, improbably, inexorably-around love.
From birth to death, love is not just the focus of human experience but also the life force of the mind, determining our moods, stabilizing our bodily rhythms, and changing the structure of our brains. The body's physiology ensures that relationships determine and fix our identities. Love makes us who we are, and who we can become. In these pages, we explain how and why this is so.
During the long centuries when science slumbered, humanity relied on the arts to chronicle the heart's mysterious ways. That accumulated wisdom is not to be disdained. This book, while traveling deep into the realm of science, keeps close at hand the humanism that renders such a journey meaningful. The thoughts of researchers and empiricists join those of poets, philosophers, and kings. Their respective starting points may be disparate in space, time, and temperament, but the voices in this volume rise and converge toward a common goal.
Every book, if it is anything at all, is an argument: an articulate arrow of words, fledged and notched and newly anointed with sharpened stone, speeding through paragraphs to its shimmering target. This book-as it elucidates the shaping power of parental devotion, the biological reality of romance, the healing force of communal connection-argues for love. Turn the page, and the arrow is loosed. The heart it seeks is your own.
Product details
- Publisher : Vintage; Reprint edition (January 9, 2001)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 274 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0375709223
- ISBN-13 : 978-0375709227
- Item Weight : 9.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.15 x 0.59 x 7.99 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #60,237 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #122 in Popular Neuropsychology
- #157 in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
- #172 in Emotional Mental Health
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First, a few words about how this book is written. You won't get more than a few pages without noticing that in addition to caring about their subject, the authors care very much about the way they say it. In a thousand places in this book, where another author might have made a straightforward statement, these authors used a colorful metaphor or a quote from literature to make their point with more style. For example, toward the end of the book they make the point that these days many Americans, somewhat starved for limbic connection, are investing heavily in their jobs only to discover later that it was all business as far as the corporation was concerned. These people will, the authors say, "reap a harvest of dust." The book is chock full of such stylistic choices.
You might really like that kind of writing. I have to admit that I do. But if you find it a drag, or if English isn't your first language and every metaphor or literary reference leaves you confused, then this may not be the book for you.
OK, on to the content. This book talks about the limbic system and how a young mammal needs consistent close contact with primary caregivers, particularly its mother, in order for its brain to develop correctly. Some of this you've probably heard before: kids raised in isolation often die, monkeys separated from their mothers grow up with severe social problems (isolation syndrome). Apparently a number of internal processes are in some sense "calibrated" by contact with and feedback from primary caregivers. The authors talk about some of this and about memory structures in the brain and their role in emotions.
The overwhelming point of the book is that attachment and limbic connection in those formative years are extremely important, and modern (particularly American) society has done much to undermine it. They make quite a point of asking why we do not let our children sleep with us, for example, and point out other ways in which we give our children's limbic systems short shrift.
They also give us their take on the consequences, which include the resulting adults not being competent in relationships, being prone to anxiety, depression, and drug abuse, being superficial and narcissistic, being attached to objects incapable of reciprocating, and so on. The authors also argue that ignoring the limbic system is the grave error of western medicine, and that alternative medicine is an attempt to fix that error. Other problems in society are traced back to the same root cause.
While there are parts of the argument that are a bit vague, and it seems likely to me that some of these problems have multiple causes, it's mostly pretty compelling in the case it presents that we are not paying enough attention to the attachment needs of children and that lots of bad things result, at least in part, from that. If nothing else, I'd love to see future parents of young children read this book and think hard about whether they want to shuffle kids off to another room to sleep. Along the way you're also liable to reflect on your own childhood and your own relationships in light of what you're reading, and that will be a good thing as well.
One thing I found mildly disappointing was the authors' obvious disdain for evolutionary psychology. In the end notes they even throw out some quotes from Steven Pinker about the uselessness of art, which they apparently found quite offensive. Of course Pinker was talking about the uselessness of art toward reproductive success, and I'm guessing that the authors, who obviously greatly appreciate the arts, didn't fully get that. Evolutionary psychology has been an enormous boon to our understanding of human nature, and the fact that the authors don't seem to be on board makes me wonder whether they are "old school," like the older biologists who resisted the transformation that DNA analysis brought to biology.
But overall, the book was a great read, unusual in its rich literary style, and will lead to personal insights for many. An excellent work.
Kirk Honda
February 14, 2013
In their book A General Theory of Love (2000), Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon, psychiatry professors at the University of California, San Francisco, examined the phenomenon of love and attachment by synthesizing the previously separate fields of cognitive psychology, art, neuroscience, culture, and evolutionary biology. The style of the book lies within a happy medium between stagnant scientific journals and accessible self-help books. The book effortlessly sways back and forth from romantic sentiment to cutting-edge scientific research. In this way, this book appeals to academics and non-academics alike, and its popularity is evidenced by it having been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean, Latvian, Croatian, and Farsi.
The Main Points
The four main points of the book are: 1) our brains are affected by those closest to us, particularly during childhood; 2) within intimate relationships, our limbic systems synchronize with one another; 3) our brains can be changed for the better through long-term therapy; and 4) American society often frustrates our efforts to satisfy our biological need for connection.
Evolutionary Biology
The authors begin by educating us in biological fundamentals, explaining the triune brain (reptilian with its basic functions, limbic with its emotional function, and neocortical with its facility to reason) and explaining how evolution led to our illogically-structured brain. As ancestor animals adapted to their environment, each evolutionary solution was solved by modifying already-established structures, including the nervous system. Thus, over the eons, evolution's twists and turns led to a quirkily designed brain. Structures of the brain evolved incrementally and without and end goal (p. 21).
Early Relationships
The authors take us further down the road toward love by describing the evolved functions of the brain structures involved in early relationships. Throughout the ages, instincts have evolved. For example, infants have an instinctual attraction to faces and a pre-programmed understanding of facial expressions (p. 61). This multitude of inborn brain structures encourages survival by fostering a bond between parent and child, so the child may be protected and taught by the parent. Along these lines, research has found that a lack of nurturing love will damage the human brain forever (p. 89). Grim evidence of this can be found within findings that extreme emotional deprivation can even cause infant death (p. 87). Human children are pre-designed for attachment and they need it for biological and practical survival.
Neurons and Neurotransmitters
The authors continue by explaining that the brain is a network of neurons. Through chemistry (neurotransmitters), neurons send signals to each other. By altering the chemistry in the brain, one can alter the functioning of the mind. Caffeine can cause alertness, SSRI's can alleviate depression, Ritalin can increase focus, and so on. In theory, all aspects of the mind are modulated by chemistry, including love.
The authors briefly discuss the neurotransmitters involved in experiences of love. They point out that current biological investigations of love focus on three crucial chemicals: serotonin, opiates, and oxytocin (p. 92). For instance, oxytocin levels have been found to surge in human mothers around birth which stimulates labor and also facilitates bonding between mother and neonate. Also, oxytocin gushes at puberty which motivates crushes and romantic love (p. 97).
Early animals evolved a mechanism to detect bodily damage: the neurotransmitters involved in the sensation of pain. And since the body needs a way to restore balance, opiates evolved to assuage that pain. When mammals evolved the limbic brain to facilitate the dependence on each other for survival, evolution recruited this primitive pain/opiate system to motivate mammalian social behavior. This is why relationships are both pleasurable and agonizing. For example, most people say that nothing is more painful that losing a loved one (p. 95).
Cutting. As a particularly poignant application of this theory, the authors attempt to explain cutting behaviors. Life is rife with tiny and not-so-tiny rejections - a disagreement, an apathetic look, a break-up. These social experiences produce emotional pain, which in some ways is indistinguishable from physical pain. When a teen cuts her skin, pain fibers send pain signals to her brain. Eventually, the brain releases pain's counterweight: the soothing, numbing opiates. In effect, she caused a physical pain to trick her nervous system into eventually numbing both her physical pain and her emotional pain (p. 96).
Limbic Attractors
The authors dedicate a significant portion of the book to describing research in cognitive psychology that demonstrates that much of our motivations, memories, and processing occurs outside of our awareness or control. With this empirical foundation, the authors assert that the limbic brain contains emotional Attractors, encoded early in life (p. 140). These Attractors compel bias when viewing emotions and relationships. They influence our experience of romantic relationships. Since these templates were established within the mostly-unconscious limbic brain, these Attractors are nearly impossible to modulate by the conscious mind (p. 142).
Parenting and the Development of Self
In the first few years of life, the over-abundant neural pathways are whittled down to a select set of frequently-used circuits. Through repeated experience with caregivers, the brain becomes imprinted with what love feels like to the child. This collection of experiences and their neural consequences tell the child what relationships are, how they function, what to anticipate, and how to conduct them. If parents love children healthily, wherein mistakes are forgiven, children's needs are paramount, and hurts are soothed, then that is how the children will feel about themselves and relate others later in life (p. 160).
Romance
The target audience of the book seems to be people who have had a troubled romantic life in that the authors are often attempting to explain why so many of us have dysfunctional relationship patterns.
Early experiences establish particular neural pathways that set the stage of adult romantic relationships and how they feel to us. If a child is not given a steady limbic resonance, that child will have difficulty empathizing with others. Whereas if a child experiences a steady limbic connection, that child will develop the ability to empathize, to look inside someone else, and to respond accordingly. And when two healthy limbic systems join, limbic attunement allows these lovers to regulate each other's emotions, neurophysiology, hormonal status, immune system, and other functions (p. 207).
Psychotherapy
The authors go on to assert that the human limbic system is stabilized through relatedness. In the short-term, when people are hurting and out of balance, they turn to others for support - this returns them to limbic homeostasis (p. 170). In the long-term, people can permanently fine tune their limbic systems through prolonged contact with a caring, wise, responsive person who, over time, can bolster their healthy neural networks that will lead to increased self-soothing and relationship satisfaction. Many people leave therapy sessions (regardless of the theoretical orientation of the therapist) feeling calmer, stronger, safer and often they don't know why (p. 171). This is the result of limbic resonance, which is outside of conscious awareness.
When a client comes in to therapy suffering from unfulfilling relationships or low self-esteem, the therapist, through long-term limbic attendance, alters the microanatomy of the client's brain. Long-term, relationship-oriented psychotherapy strengthens or weakens particular neural pathways (p. 176). Short-term self-help solutions are ineffective because they propose that a strong-willed client should be able to change how they think and feel. But the psychophysiology of emotional life cannot be changed so easily. It took a limbic connection to create the problem and it will take a lived limbic connection to repair it (p. 177).
Society
The authors make a compelling argument that American individualism, materialism and capitalism are frustrating our emotional and physical health. Americans are encouraged to achieve and not to attach (p. 206). For example, we disparage "needy" people, but we glorify self-made individuals. Since our culture promotes self-sufficiency which leads to isolation, we suffer needlessly from anxiety, depression, narcissism and other such maladies of the 21st century. Therefore the authors advise that we should not only privilege our cortex/cognitive mind, but we should also pay attention to our limbic/emotional selves (p. 229). To this end, the authors also advise that couples should spend time together if they want to maintain their bond.
Mainstream medicine has responded to external and internal economic pressures by paying less attention to patients' limbic system. The authors claim American patients have deserted mainstream medicine for the warm embrace of practitioners who attend to patients' limbic system: massage therapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, and a host of others (p. 222). They recommend mainstream medicine change their systems and practices to the way things were before, when kindly doctors attended to the patients' limbic systems.
Critique
The authors wisely admit that even though love emanates from the physical brain and science provides a valuable tool for exploring the brain, human beings come equipped with an older means of discerning the nature of emotion: subjectivity (p. 12). This is a welcomed admission for those readers who are skeptical of the broad and reductionistic claims often made within science today.
Brief Therapy. The authors disparage brief therapy as a universally unfortunate development since it denies clients' need for long-term limbic attendance. As a relational therapist, I agree with the authors' assertion that some therapeutic goals are best met through an ongoing attuned therapeutic relationship. In support of this, there is a growing body of empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of long-term, psychodynamic therapy (Town et al., 2012). However, many of my clients also come to therapy for issues that are not suited for long-term therapies. Some clients' goals are best met in short-term therapy. Furthermore, brief therapies have a much larger body of evidence supporting their efficacy. As one of many examples, a 2012 meta-analysis of 15 randomized controlled trials found brief psychotherapies to be more efficacious than control (Nieuwsma, Trivedi, Mcduffie, Kronish, Benjamin, & Williams, 2012).
No Credit Given. Much of the book is common wisdom: love feels good, childhood experiences affect adult relationships, parents should pay attention to children's needs, society pressures us to move too fast for our own good, etc. These are good messages, and the authors provide an inspiring new angle on these old wisdoms. However, since the authors do not credit the giants upon which they stand, many readers might attribute these wisdoms to the authors themselves. It is common for self-help authors to write as if they were the first to put forth their ideas, but academic psychiatrists should know better. One might defend the authors by pointing out that this book is meant for the lay audience who don't care about citations. However, these are adept writers who could have woven in a few references to satisfy the academic audience.
The title of book could have been The Recent Biological Science that Supports the Long-Established Bowlby/Ainsworth Attachment Theory. But I suppose that title would have spoiled the book's marketing efforts. Attachment theory was mentioned only briefly in the book. The authors did not credit Bowlby, Ainsworth, and the many other theorists who had similar if not identical claims - this is like writing a book about gravity and not mentioning Newton.
Myths and Truths. As an example, after a somewhat long, circuitous discussion regarding cognitive research findings, the authors arrive at one of their main concepts: Limbic Attractors, or biases developed early in life that affect one's view of adult relationships. During this discussion, the authors mention that Freud's concept of transference is similar to their concept of Limbic Attractors. This exhibits responsible writing: give credit where credit is due. However, in the next paragraph, they write "Science has a way of supplanting myths with no less fantastic truths: transference exists because the brain remembers with neurons" (p. 141). The key words are "myths" and "truths." Transference is a myth while Attractors is a truth.
Limbic Resonance. (I am not a biologist, so my opinion on the following matter should be taken with a grain salt.) Throughout the book, the authors claim that our limbic brains synchronize, resonate, regulate, and revise. However, in my humble opinion, they did not provide any direct empirical evidence of this claim. Perhaps they merely omitted the research for the sake of readability. Or perhaps such supporting evidence does not exist. Their claims make intuitive sense, but without biological evidence, the authors are merely repackaging long-established psychological philosophy within biological terminology.
Perhaps the authors did not want to bore the lay audience with research and jargon. Or perhaps the authors wanted to make it seem as though they were truly inventing a new General Theory of Love. Rather than speculating, I wrote the authors and asked them. They have yet to reply.
Conclusion
This book added to my understanding of attachment. It has illuminated connections I had not seen previously. For example, I have worked with many clients who cut. The authors' explanation of the involved neurochemistry (i.e., opiates) was the missing puzzle piece in my formulation of self-abuse.
Also, this book helped me to understand the biological effects of love and the biological effects of a lack of love. The authors have bolstered and inspired my efforts to foster more love in the world. After reading this book, I found myself focusing more attention on my clients' "limbic" selves. Are they getting enough love in their lives? Could they give more love to others? I have always recommended cuddle time for couples but now I can make connections between cuddling and their brain chemistry, which in turn affects other areas in the lives (e.g., sleep quality, mood, immune system), which in turn affects their cuddle time, creating a recursive cycle.
A reviewer on Amazon.com wrote (retrieved on 2/8/13): "This book was an eye-opening experience for me. Since my early teens, I've established a pattern of being in relationships that start out on a high and then eventually deteriorate and fail. I've never understood why I involve myself-a successful, intelligent, generally happy person-with people who leave me dissatisfied, feeling worthless, and convinced that I should just give up and relegate myself to a lonely Siberian outpost. A General Theory of Love enlightened me. Not in some namby-pamby, self-help, touchy-feely kind of way-but by explaining the science of brain development and the associated outcomes in our personal lives using accessible, easy to understand language that borders on lyric prose. Thank you Dr. Lewis for introducing me to myself!"
There are many more reviews like this one. Regardless of the critique, this book has helped people to understand themselves and to forgive themselves for their relationship foibles. I suppose that benefit far outweighs any shortcoming.
References
Lewis, T., Amini, F., & Lannon, R. (2000). A general theory of love. New York: Random House.
Nieuwsma, J., Trivedi, R., Mcduffie, J., Kronish, I., Benjamin, D., & Williams J. (2012). Brief psychotherapy for depression: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 43(2), 129-51.
Town, J.M., Diener, M.J., Abbass, A., Leichsenring, F., Driessen, E., & Rabung, S. (2012). A meta-analysis of psychodynamic psychotherapy outcomes: evaluating the effects of research-specific procedures. Psychotherapy, 49(3), 276-290.
Top reviews from other countries
I recommend this book to everyone.





