A General Theory of Love (2000) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Characters/People edit see section history

• Lorenz: Add a description of this character.
• Hofer
• Mr. Underwood
• Holmes
• Darwin
• Boswell
• Watson
• Matisse
• Ainsworth
• Einstein
• Ekman

Quotes edit see section history

• “love cannot be extracted, commanded, demanded, or wheedled”

• “The adventure of seeking a theory of love is far from over”

• “We demand too much if we expect single-handed empiricism to define and lay bare the human soul”

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• Stability means finding people who regulate you well and staying near them.

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• A person cannot direct his emotional life in the way he bids his motor system to reach for a cup. He cannot will himself to want the right thing, or to love the right person, or to be happy after a disappointment, or even to be happy in happy times. People lack this capacity not through a deficiency of discipline but because the jurisdiction of will is limited to the latest brain and to those functions within its purview. Emotional life can be influenced, but it cannot be commanded.

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• Emotion is the messenger of love; it is the vehicle that carries every signal from one brimming heart to another. For human beings, feeling deeply is synonymous with being alive.

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• “We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead; it can only serve.”

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• In a relationship, one mind revises another; one heart changes its partner. This astounding legacy of our combined status as mammals and neural beings is limbic revision: the power to remodel the emotional parts of the people we love, as our Attractors activate certain limbic pathways, and the brain’s inexorable memory mechanism reinforces them. Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love.

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• a mood is a state of enhanced readiness to experience a certain emotion. Where an emotion is a single note, clearly struck, hanging for a moment in the still air, a mood is the extended, nearly inaudible echo that follows.

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• limbic resonance—a symphony of mutual exchange and internal adaptation whereby two mammals become attuned to each other’s inner states. It is limbic resonance that makes looking into the face of another emotionally responsive creature a multilayered experience.

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• A relationship that strays from one’s prototype is limbically equivalent to isolation. Loneliness outweighs most pain. These two facts collude to produce one of love’s common and initially baffling quirks: most people will choose misery with a partner their limbic brain recognizes over the stagnant pleasure of a “nice” relationship with someone their attachment mechanisms cannot detect.

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• Those who attempt to study the body without books sail an uncharted sea, William Osler observed, while those who only study books do not go to sea at all.

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• It has been said that neurotics build castles in the sky, while psychotics live in them, and psychiatrists collect the rent.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• America
• Sids

First Sentence edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Thomas Lewis (Author)
2. Fari Amini
3. Richard Lannon

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 152.41

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Health, Mind & Body › Mental Health › Emotions
• Books › Health, Mind & Body › Psychology & Counseling › Neuropsychology