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: Excellent but frustrating book
Summary: 4 Stars
Originality and insight regarding human development and relationships: A.
Originality, insight and sensitivity regarding gender and society: F.
Writing: B+.
I experienced a paradigm shift in my view of how humans create and form relationships and healthy emotional lives as a result of reading this book. It provides clear information about basic brain anatomy and function, with excellent discussion of why our emotional and cognitive lives often seem separate from each other. The book focuses on the limbic brain as the seat of emotion, and on its need for relationship and attachment throughout our lives.
After this, the authors disappointed me by reviewing a tired litany of all the ills of our impersonal society, with the resultant epidemics of mental illness and addiction. The authors provided no original insight into how an adult can improve his or her experience within this society apart from years of psychotherapy; nor did they provide any original policy ideas to improve the society they criticize.
Throughout the book I felt a growing sense that the authors' philosophy was hostile to women. At first I thought I might be overreacting to the outdated use of male singular pronouns (I don't know when I last read a modern book using "he" to mean "he or she"). However, when I came to the relentless focus on the mother - and only the mother - as the source of young children's emotional learning in the middle chapters of the book, I could only conclude that my impression was real, and that the authors were possibly making a deliberate political statement.
The book is written in a way that is sometimes beautiful but prone to florid language and exaggeration. Its frequent metaphors yield some lovely imagery, but sometimes I yearned for straightforward explanation. The many quotes are delightful and illuminating.
In short, I strongly recommend the book for the insight and information it provides, but you may wish to bring a big shaker of salt and use it liberally.
Book Review: Great insight on love from a scientific perspective
Summary: 5 Stars
This book by three San Francisco psychiatists is unique and sheds light on one of life's greatest mysteries in an eloquent and easy to read fashion. It makes some very difficult scientific concepts accessible to people without specialized knowledge in neurology or psychology.
The authors do a good job of balancing the insights of science with the interpretation necessary to understand subjective experience. While the book is speculative in some ways, it is intelligently and appropriately speculative.
This book was difficult to put down because it brings together an understanding of attachment theory, brain research and striking analogies to come up with a scientifically plausible explanation of love. The real achievement here is not dehumanizing the experience of love in the process of writing about it from within a scientific paradigm. However, I think they are a little hard on Freud and the psychoanalytical field. While Freud wasn't perfect, he had a lot of great insights for someone of his time. At times, I found the authors dismissive of some of the work in this area without presenting compelling arguments appropriate to the strength of their statements.
I particularly liked the way this book talked about implicit memory and how this plays a role in love without us being conscious of the process. This helps explain why the head and the heart are often at odds.
Another unusual aspect of this book is how well written it is. It's difficult to put down and does not come across as overly technical or mechanical. It is juicy... so to speak! In other words, it lacks the sterility of some of the books written by highly technical people about thier own fields.
While I don't think these authors unlocked the ultimate secret of love, they certainly raised the right questions and helped move our understanding forward in this area. This is a good book for anyone who wants to understand love at a deeper level. I recommend it highly!
Book Review: A Stunning Work
Summary: 4 Stars
I've found in this book a language, structure, and paradigm for understanding the core essense of the human experience. It ranks among the most influential books I've ever read. It clearly explains how patterns are formed in the brain and how those patterns affect our lives. Particularly fascinating were the sections that describe "limbic resonance" - the process through which humans influence (and re-wire) each other. It would be nice to understand more clearly how this works, but, the book's introduction to this process is nonetheless tantalizing. I was most struck by the author's conclusion that one of our most important jobs in life is to find people with whom we can share positive limbic resonance; in effect, finding people with a healthy brain structure who can influence us in healthy ways, and to recognize and avoid the dangerous temptation to connect with those who may possess the similar flaws and would therefore influence us in negative ways which might feel good because they are familiar. As numerous other reviewers have noted, the writing style is sublime. A concern about this book is the overwhelmingly depressing and fatalistic perspective it puts forth. Most of the book is devoted to the development of theories which explain the causes of thought patterns in the brain which lead to unhealthy psychological experience in life. Hardly any attention is given to a prescriptive solution through which one might work to overcome those patterns except for a brief mention of the need for therapy - a suggestion whose utility is undercut by the book's own development of the numerous failings of many forms of therapy due to faulty paradigms (Freud) or incompetent therapists. This truly wonderful book would be that much better if the author were to devote as much effort to exploring solutions as he devotes to explaining the problems. In particular, it would be fascinating to learn how practices such as meditation and yoga interact with the dynamics explained in this book.Book Review: Love Demystified
Summary: 4 Stars
What is love? The authors take a hard-science look at the biological and evolutionary basis for love. But they also use poetry to bring home the point that words and rational thinking can never fully capture the reality of love. Nevertheless, it is revealing to understand how the human brain is organized and how unlearning a behavior is more difficult than learning it.
When discussing love, they start with the love a mother has for her child. This attachment, they explain, is critical for the survival of the species. Relationships not only feel good, they argue, but are necessary for good health and even survival. In later life, we will be attracted to and bond with people whose brain structure matches a prototype we develop during childhood. If this prototype is unhealthy, we might find ourselves continually drawn to people who mistreat or abuse us. But the ideal case is that we have a healthy prototype for a mate, and that when we find each other everything clicks in a harmonious and satisfying way.
The authors spend some time tearing into Freud with passion. Without any scientific knowledge of how our brain is structured or functions, Freud created the school of psychotherapy that is full of misconceptions and bad ideas. They give him credit for attempting a scientific exploration of emotions and emotional problems, but blame him for inventing explanations from little or no evidence.
One topic not discussed is the need many of us feel to get away from people from time to time. They describe in detail the need for relationships and attachment, but don't even consider the possibility that at least some us sometime crave time alone. Likewise, no discussion was made of the need felt by teenage children to separate from their parents.
But in total, this was a very readable and credible case for a theory of love.
Book Review: Neo-Freudianism in Medicine's Clothing
Summary: 2 Stars
The problem with this book is that it's disingenuous. While it gives the impression of being based in biology, it's actually based in the works of Freud and his theory of psychoanalysis.
Some of the things purported in the book are patently wrong, and others are stretching what is presently known to possibly provide explanation for famous Freudian theories. I enjoyed reading this book, because as a student of psychology, I was glad to get a more in-depth understanding of the neo-Freudian perspective, but would not recommend it to others who want an actual understanding of the biological foundation for how love works.
Many of Freud's aspects come out in this book. For one, Freud was a philosopher as much as a psychologist, and the authors here seem to follow suit. They use literature as proofs for what they are saying, and argue many things which would logically follow from what we already know - but without providing any evidence that they're right. For example, they say that mammals have emotion because we have the center for emotion, the limbic part of the brain, was already evolved from the time of mammals. This is false. The limbic brain developed a bit more, but more importantly, the monkey-human neocortex is vital for many of the higher emotions that we have. Furthermore, they base a whole chapter on the theory that our brain's neural networks remember what we have forgotten. I find it shocking that they could make such an unconditional statement, considering that the neural network theory is known to be incomplete, and is still being worked out as we speak.
This book is argument, not fact. If that's what you're looking for, then it will be a very enjoyable read. But if you're looking for actual empirically supported reporting, I'm sorry to say that you should look elsewhere.