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Title: A General Theory of Love by Fari Amini, Richard Lannon, Thomas Lewis ISBN: 0-375-70922-3 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 09 January, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.41 (54 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Educational, marvelous, life-changing
Comment: By presenting how the brain works, these three psychiatrists expand our understanding of the ways human beings love, relate, and exist. They elaborate on how our human brains resonate with those with whom we are close, thereby ensuring our mental health and giving us positive feelings. Humans are not meant to be solitary. And by extrapolating these ideas, among others, into daily lives, the authors explain how relationships work biologically, how parenting affects a child's brain in early development, and how our modern society and culture is actually dangerous for our health. "A General Theory of Love" is an insightful, accessible look into the psychobiology of love. This is one of those books that will essentially change the way a reader perceives the world and humanity.
Rating: 2
Summary: What is the mechanism behind the "General Theory" of love?
Comment: Your book is truly frightening in its final chapters, while much of the initial chapters are seductively scientific, biological and, thus for me, quite compelling. You suggest no realistic neurological mechanisms for "limbic resonance" which is offered as a means of fundamentally communicating love, and also (by implication) as a means of therapy for the love-dysfunctional. You suggest that such therapy may take many years. I find it hard to believe that we are sufficiently ill to require this degree of intensive relations with a professional who is, after all, conducting uncontrolled experiments with our minds (this will remain true until we completely understand the mind). The initial biological basis of your book is compelling, but it falls short when you simply walk away from the essential questions of "how" and "why." You correctly note that at least one side of our neocortical brain processes emotional information, yet you totally ignore the connection that this part of the neocortex has with its limbic foundation. This is critical if there is to be any real hope for those who believe that "insight therapy" (based on neocortical function) will in any way help their problems. Your last chapter is utterly devoid of hope for the epidemic of anxiety and depression that, as you correctly observe, plague our modern culture.
As an evolutionary biologist, I welcome your refreshing approach to psychobiology, but I have three concerns about your work. (1) It ignores the power of our recently-evolved neocortex to influence affective disorders. Although I do not understand how this can occur, I would suggest that more research should be done in this area. The physical connections between the two parts of the brain exist. Why? Truly debilitating affective disorder did not develop with the limbic system alone (these organisms would be extinct). Modern affective disease requires interaction with the neocortex. We are missing something here, although I certainly lack the expertise to tell you what it is. You completely fail to recognize that cultural evolution is far faster and potentially more powerful than biological evolution, and how this might relate to the problems that you pose. (2) You offer no mechanisms for the central feature of your theory, "limbic resonance." It could be that we are simply not using our neocortex to its fullest capacity to solve these problems, or perhaps, we are failing to understand the appropriate way to communicate between the two parts, i.e., your poorly defined "limbic resonance." (3) Your final chapter offers no explicit solution for affectively ill individuals, or, for that matter, our society as a whole. While much of the pathology of modern society that you cite is without question true, your link between the limbic brain and these ills is merely assertion, although, I admit that the possibility of such a link is frightening in the context of our evolutionary future.
In sum, this work should go through the peer review process. I would be very interested to learn what your anonymous peer-reviewers might have to say about this book.
Rating: 1
Summary: numerous fallacies
Comment: Somehow the authors manage to supply numerous factual inaccuracies from a number of fields. Badly misrepresents ethology (mammals are loving, family-oriented -- does not indicate that the paradigmatic mammal relationship is only mother-juvenile, ending abruptly at amturity, w/ no father in sight, & sociality in herds, etc.; psychology and attachment theory (distorts Winnicott's complex relationship with Bowlby, by misused, out-of-context quote; Freud's neutrality theory (which the authors describe as advocating "coldness"), and on and on. Finally, the authors conclude that Americans are too materialistic. Shocking. On the whole, a shallow, inaccurate, and surprisingly mean-spirited treatment of the topic.
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