A General Theory of Love
by Thomas;Amini, Fari;Lannon, Richard Lewis
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Book Reviews of A General Theory of Love
Book Review: Good up to a point
Summary: 3 Stars
As a readable summary of the current science of how the brain works and the importance of emotional development this book is excellent. Unfortunately the authors go from science to informed opinion to outright speculation and near hysteria about society's neglect of emotional development. The book loses some credibility at this point. It is easy to know where the authors stray from science to opinion, when they stop referencing history or scientific studies supporting their claims they have entered the opinion zone. For example the author's dedicate a chapter to their views on how therapy should work. While they certainly have informed opinions and their ideas seem credible, there are other informed opinions on the subject that can also be presented in a credible fashion. Has anyone conducted a study contrasting the effectiveness of different approaches to therapy? If not, then all the contrasting opinions remain just opinions.
The authors also devote a lot of attention to the need for proper mother-child bonding for emotional development. No one will argue with their view that proper parenting is essential for the development of a child's emotional health, or limbic development as it is described in this book. The authors then reference a number of recent cases of children committing appalling crimes, beginning with the Columbine High School murder, and imply that "limbic defects" are the cause. However they did not give any evidence that the two students who went on the murder and suicide spree at Columbine had experienced any kind of neglect or trauma that would lead to the improper limbic development they fretted about. While I believe there are studies that indicate that a neglected childhood increases the probability of anti-social behaviour, the authors provide no evidence that parental neglect contributed to any of the crimes they cited. If such evidence exists it should have been referenced.
The authors also state "In a culture gone shallow, .... photogenicity trumps leadership; glibness overpowers integrity; sound bites replace discourse; and changing what is fades before the busy label-swapping of political correctness." Let me get this straight; as a society we want simple solutions and feel-good politics because of we were not raised to achieve proper emotional health? I thought it was because we are mentally lazy; simple answers require no thought. However if the authors were to cite a study correlating emotional health with a willingness to research important policy issues and engage in intelligent political debate, or simply to a willingness to balance one's checkbook without the assistance of a calculator, I would believe that limbic health is related to awillingness to think. In the absence of such evidence, I believe that blaming society's superficial aspects on improper limbic development is an unsupportable stretch.
Finally, I don't think we are as bad off as this book claims. One of the studies referenced correlated the emotional development of baby rhesus monkeys to the amount of time they were left unattended while their mothers searched for food. Just as mother rhesus monkeys would have to balance food and nurture, so have parents through the ages had to balance caring for their children with the needs of survival. And somehow in spite of the compromises parents have had to make people and rhesus monkeys have managed to get by. So don't panic if as a baby you were bottle fed and not breast fed, and slept in a crib instead of with you mother. Maybe most of us are not as emotionally fragile as the authors fear.
Book Review: Interesting book but weak on psychotherapy
Summary: 3 Stars
This book has some good qualities along with some major flaws. First I should say that it is beautifully written in a style which is almost like a poetic kind of prose. I am a clinical psychologist, and I like the fact that the authors are psychiatrists who are obviously oriented to psychotherapy something that is not so common these days. There is also a nice humanistic quality to this book and the overall theory of love with its evolutionary perspective I found interesting and relevant. As for flaws I see two major ones: an apparent lack of awareness of the history of psychotherapy and a lack of knowledge about treatment outcome research. They present a relationship oriented approach to psychotherapy which in practice sounds almost identical to that of Carl Rogers who emphasized the importance of therapist empathy and believed that the therapeutic relationship itself was the curative factor in psychotherapy. Rogers began formulating his views in the 1940's and ultimately became one of the most influential figures in the history of psychotherapy. Yet amazingly Carl Rogers is not mentioned even once in this book! In addition they fail to mention family systems approaches which view family attachments as the key determinant of human emotional life and also of mental disorders. They also seem to echo one of the key trends in psychotherapy from the 1960's when many of the experiential therapies claimed that most insight was too intellectual and sterile and only emotional experience was seen as therapeutic, a somewhat outdated view. The authors then state that only relationship quality and not therapeutic orientation makes any difference and only long-term therapy can be effective. As someone who specializes in anxiety disorders I know this to be completely inaccurate. There are countless treatment outcome studies done at top universities and medical schools with cognitive-behavior therapy of anxiety disorders with success rates as high as over 90% with short-term therapy. There is no one suffering from agoraphobia or a specific phobia who is going to overcome these problems simply by establishing a good relationship with a therapist even if they come for five years. Exposure therapy is absolutely essential. These results are irrefutable, occur in short-term therapy, and only within the specific modality of cognitive-behavior therapy. This is in complete contradiction to the statements made by the authors and show an unacceptable lack of awareness or selective inattention to the current scientific literature in psychotherapy. My advice for most people is that if a therapist says that therapy will take three to five years explore the possibility of seeing another therapist. The authors also seem to make the assumption that all problems are relationship problems which is not always the case. Some problems are the result of simple classical conditioning such as many anxiety disorders. I also have trouble with the biological rationale offered by these authors for their treatment. If mammals all have a similar limbic brain then why don't we find the same mental disorders in animals as we do in humans? Do dogs suffer from agoraphobia or dissociative disorders? They completely neglect the role of higher human functions which give us the ability to reason, to see a future and a past, and the capacity for language as if these play no role in human emotions and emotional disturbance. So there are some significant problems with this book, but it does have some good points and I think is worth the read.Book Review: Not quite a perfect book
Summary: 4 Stars
I wish to sound a note of caution about this book in my review. I found this to be a most valuable (and heartwarming!) book. For me the authors (maybe Dr. Lewis actually wrote the book?) did a beautiful job of explaining the evolutionary advantages attained by mammals with their limbic brain, gaining the ability to obtain information about the internal emotional state of other mammals. On the other hand, perhaps the authors *overemphasized* the advantages of gaining the ability to influence each other's emotional states, while not examining many disadvantages. Although probably required for the optimum of healthy individual development, a group could synchronize internal states, producing a mutual sense of well-being, and, without some other internal anchor, drift inexorably over a cliff while doing so. The mutual influences which led to the 1978 Jonestown suicide/massacre, or to the rise of Nazism in the 1930's and 1940's, are examples of this, I think. The development, in individuals, of characteristics not ultimately well suited to coping with reality, due to the influences of likewise-unhealthy parents, peers, society, or therapists, is one more example. (The authors do admit the existence of bad therapists.) The book's exposition of mutual influence also goes to explain *these* outcomes.
The authors may emphasize a bit too exclusively the unconditional love that a mother needs to provide in the earliest parts of childhood, and not quite enough the disciplined love that teaches a child the necessity of taking external *reality* into account also -- a role traditionally thought of as being the father's. Perhaps with this instruction the neo-cortex helps the organism to create or improve another anchor, different from the one of emotional satisfaction, and in doing so to gain increased mastery of external and internal realities. This is not emphasized in the book. Of course, the possessor of the neo-cortex has his own resultant problems. I think both elements are needed to culminate in a healthy adult.
For adults without a favorable childhood, therapy may be highly beneficial. But in chapter 8 of the book, the authors state "...a therapy's results are particular to *that* relationship. A patient doesn't become generically healthier; he becomes more like the therapist... The person of the therapist will determine the shape of the new world a patient is bound for; the configuration of *his* Attractors fixes those of the other." Is that what we desire -- a crop of therapist clones? I presume they would be modeled after the authors... *I* would rather have a therapist with a strong enough Attractor of his own, and a secure enough network of support, so that he could allow the patient to become *herself*, not necessarily a close reproduction of the therapist. And although I agree that time is needed to heal pre-existing damage, I am not sure that three to five years is required. The amount of healing that takes place depends also on how much reassurance is successfully given in the time which is spent on it.
I see the three therapists (and their publishers) as possibly being examples of a group that reached a state of considerable mutual grooming satisfaction. They included me in that group. Maybe that is not all that is required to bring other people to emotional health.
Note: do not overlook the Notes and Bibliography at the end of the book.
Book Review: Love, Children and other important stuff of the good life
Summary: 5 Stars
Part advanced science presentation, part advocacy for the return of love and genuine caring to the raising of children from birth, part fierce and reasoned assault on modern American medicine, culturally approved parental child-rearing delegation, and the inappropriate and potentially harmful elevation of pharmaceutical fix as a patch for damaged psyches. This extraordinary book, written by three psychiatrists, who care deeply about love and truly healthy human beings, and are saddened by its inferior status in the pantheon of American cultural values, give us an important book that ultimately questions some of our most cherished values and beliefs about what constitutes `the good life', and, perhaps most especially, how do we care for and develop that most important, but woefully neglected, natural resource-children.
I loved this book, and have learned so much from it, both for my own personal use, simply for the knowledge and wisdom it imparts, and for what it can teach all of us about the value of love for individuals and for society.
Disseminating recent scientific discoveries (as well as debunking many old accepted scientific beliefs) about the biological basis of love, and presenting love and its attendant qualities and manifestations as the most significant difference between the reptilian brain and the mammalian one. These three thoughtful and passionate men explain the ramifications and importance of the development of the mammalian brain, and its superiority to a truly successful human life because the heartbeat of love resides within its neuronal pathways. (They go so far as to argue that because the presence of a healthy appreciation for and proper education about love, that the mammalian brain is more important than the cognitive brain.)
I recommend this book to those of you interested in the science of brain development, and recent discoveries about the brain and its evolution. Readers interested in a biologic basis of love, and what the authors forcefully argue as the most important quality a child, and therefore, an adult can learn during the earliest years of life when most permanent psychological and emotional learning are imprinted within the human brain, will eat up the material presented in this treatise.
I could go on writing about this book, and my enthusiasm for it, but moving to some final words, the authors, in the first thorough explanation I've read, argue for the value of psychological/psychiatric and emotional therapy, and not the several weeks' kind most offered by the misdirected and economics-focused health care system in this country. They do not promote any specific technique, but state unequivocally the importance of finding the right type of therapy.
There is so much packed into its 230 pages.
I will read this book, at least once again. I hope as many people as possible learn from its wisdom, at least for the sake of our children, who are our future.
Book Review: It's about limbic resonance
Summary: 5 Stars
There! I've spilled the beans. Now you know. But the journey these authors, all psychiatrists, take is a trip fantastic through not only neuroscience but through all the wisdom about loving attachment to other humans, nay, all mammals (a limbic system, not just mammary glands, hair, warm body temperature is our hallmark) so that we grasp why we must understand its power and necessity in our lives.
We are imbued with the ethos of the intellect as humanity's greatest gift. Parenthetically, we act (witness our wars and crime) as reptiles all too often.
It is, nonetheless the learning that takes place without our even knowing it that gives us real power and emotional health.
If you are really into reading up on the brain you will find hardly enough references to 'cerebral cortex' or 'amygdala' to keep you happy. The illustrations of brain structures are minimal. This is a book for English majors. But that's a good thing because, overall, this is a book about the forest, not the trees.
The writing style is refreshing. One feels the authors care about including one in the secrets of their arcane craft. Language can draw us in or exclude us. Theirs is inclusive.
Unless one needs to be very gently led into and out of a technical subject, one can dispense with the first and last chapters, reading them last, perhaps. I liked chapters eight and nine. But all the preceeding chapters up to the first are also vital in fleshing in the body of affection and affiliation. The word LOVE has been so misused, bowdlerized and misunderstood that some other concatenation of terms may serve better.
But be not mistaken, we all know what it is. All of us with healthy limbic systems and no other pathologies, that is. There are those who can't love. There are those who don't want to be touched. Who don't want to hear endearments. Some were born that way, some were made to be that way due to their early experiences. Yes, Virginia, I had a rotten childhood and that's why I'm on death row, says the apologetic criminal.
This is a book everyone interested in the totality of human love should read. Love poetry, love novels, love drama and even one's own love experiences are not enough to understand this greatest gift and greatest necessity (the book details how we are crippled without it) for a successful life (success, by the way, is not synonymous with wealth). A cocker spaniel bitch who raises her puppies right is a success. How can we do less?
I like the last part of the last paragraph of the preface: "... 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."