A General Theory of Love is a book about the science of human emotions Emotion is the complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience". Emotion is associated with mood, temperament, personality and disposition, and biological psychiatry Biological psychiatry, or biopsychiatry is an approach to psychiatry that aims to understand mental disorder in terms of the biological function of the nervous system. It is interdisciplinary in its approach and draws on sciences such as neuroscience, psychopharmacology, biochemistry, genetics and physiology to investigate the biological bases of written by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon, psychiatry professors at the University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dental, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world. The UCSF Medical Center is consistently ranked among the top 10 hospitals in, and first published by Random House in 2000. It has since been reissued twice, with new editions appearing in 2001 and 2007.
Contents |
Overview
The book examines the phenomenon of love and human connection from a combined scientific and cultural perspective. It attempts to reconcile the language and insights of humanistic inquiry and cultural wisdom (literature, song, poetry, painting, sculpture, dance and philosophy) with the more recent findings of social science, neuroscience and evolutionary biology. Presenting scientific facts and hypotheses through engaging prose, A General Theory of Love has been compared to the work of Stephen Pinker and Oliver Sacks. Since its first publication, the book has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean, Latvian, Croatian, and Persian Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq, Bahrain, and Oman. New Persian, which usually is called also by the names of Farsi, Parsi, Dari or Parsi-ye-Dari (Dari Persian), can be classified linguistically.[1]
Contents
The book surveys scientific understanding of emotions Emotion is the complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience". Emotion is associated with mood, temperament, personality and disposition, and particularly intimacy An intimate relationship is a particularly close interpersonal relationship. It can be defined by these characteristics: enduring behavioral interdependence, repeated interactions, emotional attachment, and need fulfillment and love Love is the emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. In religious context, love is not just a virtue, but the basis for all being , and the foundation for all divine law (Golden Rule), from Freud Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic method of psychiatry. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression, and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for treating psychopathology through modern neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. Nevertheless, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that involves other disciplines such as psychology, computer science, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and medicine. As a result, the scope of neuroscience has, with a focus on the emerging understanding of the limbic brain and the development of personality. The authors put forward the idea that our nervous systems are not separate or self-contained; beginning in earliest childhood, the areas of our brain identified as the limbic system The limbic system is a set of brain structures including the hippocampus, amygdala, anterior thalamic nuclei, and limbic cortex, which suggestively support a variety of functions including emotion, behavior, long term memory, and olfaction. The term "limbic" comes from the Latin limbus, for "border" or "edge". Some (hippocampus The hippocampus is a major component of the brains of humans and other mammals. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in long-term memory and spatial navigation. Like the cerebral cortex, with which it is closely associated, it is a paired structure, with mirror-image halves in the left and right sides of the brain. In humans, amygdala The amygdalae (Latin, from Greek αμυγδαλή, amygdalē, 'almond', 'tonsil', listed in the Gray's Anatomy as the nucleus amygdalæ) are almond-shaped groups of nuclei located deep within the medial temporal lobes of the brain in complex vertebrates, including humans. Shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing and memory of, anterior thalamic nuclei, and limbic cortex) is affected by those closest to us (limbic resonance Limbic resonance is a concept of empathic harmony arising from the limbic system of the brain. It was first advanced in the book A General Theory of Love . It refers to the capacity for empathy and non-verbal connection that is present in animals, and that forms the basis of our social connections as well as the foundation for various modes of) and synchronizes with them (limbic regulation) in a way that has profound implications for personality and lifelong emotional health Mental health is a term used to describe either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological. The authors maintain that various forms of therapy are effective not so much by virtue of their underlying theory or methodology, but to the degree to which the therapist is able to empathetically modify these set patterns (limbic revision). The authors go on to examine how many aspects of our society and social institutions have been constructed in a way that is incompatible with our innate biology, which gives rise to individual Psychopathology is the study of mental illness, mental distress and abnormal, maladaptive behavior. The term is most commonly used within psychiatry where pathology refers to disease processes. Abnormal psychology is a similar term used more frequently in the non-medical field of psychology and social pathologies.[2]
Critical Reception
A General Theory of Love received generally positive reviews, including Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, the Washington Post, and the San Francisco Examiner.[3] It reached number 5 slot on the San Francisco Chronicle's Non-Fiction best seller list.[4] However, the book has been criticized for its "convoluted and opaque" prose style,[5] as well as its extensive reliance on the model of the triune brain The triune brain is a model of the evolution of the vertebrate forebrain and behavior proposed by the American physician and neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean. MacLean originally formulated his model in the 1960's and propounded it at length in his 1990 book The Triune Brain in Evolution . The triune brain consists of the reptilian complex, the as defined by Paul D. MacLean Paul D. MacLean was an American physician and neuroscientist who made significant contributions in the fields of physiology, psychiatry, and brain research through his work at Yale Medical School and the National Institute of Mental Health. MacLean's evolutionary triune brain theory proposed that the human brain was in reality three brains in one:, a model that has been variously categorized as obsolete,[6] imprecise or unnecessary.[7]
See also
- Affective neuroscience Affective neuroscience is the study of the neural mechanisms of emotion. This interdisciplinary field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood
- Limbic resonance Limbic resonance is a concept of empathic harmony arising from the limbic system of the brain. It was first advanced in the book A General Theory of Love . It refers to the capacity for empathy and non-verbal connection that is present in animals, and that forms the basis of our social connections as well as the foundation for various modes of
- Limbic regulation
- Limbic revision
References
- ^ Lewis, Thomas. "Thomas Lewis: Author's official website". http://www.thomaslewis.com/writing.html. Retrieved 2009-05-16.
- ^ Lewis, Thomas L.; Amini, Fari; Lannon, Richard (2000). A general theory of love. New York: Random House. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0-375-50389-7.
- ^ "Amazon.com page listing review blurbs". http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0375709223/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books. Retrieved 2009-05-16.
- ^ "San Francisco Chronicle's Non-Fiction best seller list". San Francisco Chronicle. 2001-04-08. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/04/08/RV4542.DTL&type=chart. Retrieved 2009-05-16.
- ^ Prose, Francine Francine Prose is an American novelist. Since March 2007 she has been the president of PEN American Center. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968, and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991. She has sat on the board of judges for the PEN/Newman's Own Award, and her novel Blue Angel, a satire about sexual harassment on college campuses, (02/13/2000). "Kisses and Limbic Resonance, a Foolish Feeling Called Love". The New York Observer. http://www.observer.com/node/42557. Retrieved 2009-05-16.
- ^ "Wikipedia Article: Limbic System, History". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic#History. Retrieved 2009-05-16.
- ^ Joseph E, LeDoux (2000). "Emotion circuits in the brain.". Annual Review of Neuroscience. p. 155–184. doi A digital object identifier is a character string used to uniquely identify an electronic document or other object. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found. The DOI for a document is permanent, whereas its location and other metadata:10.1146/annurev.neuro.23.1.155. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10845062. Retrieved 2009-05-16.
External links
- Fari Amini, 73; Used Science To Study Love, The New York Times.
- American Scientist, book review by Roger Martin.
- Entertainment Weekly, book review by Clarissa Cruz.
- The Permanente Journal, book review by Vincent J Felitti, MD.
- The New York Times, book review by Liesl Schillinger.
Categories: 2000 books | Psychology books
Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:07:04 GMT+00:00
Salon John Medford, another building resident, joined in on the speculation: "It was kept secret for 74 years and my theory is that this rolls back the cover on a ...
683px x 510px | 21.50kB
[source page]
Appendix 1 The regression statistics for Equation 17 are given in Table 2 and the residuals gap e in Table 1 Figure 7 7a and 7b plot the gap for each dyad against its In conflict intensity where each time series is smoothed by a two year moving average and for comparison transformed to a 0 15
