A General Theory of Love

[Alana]

In a poetic language all three authors of the book, MDs and coming from 3 different generations of psychiatry, are trying to help us understand the brain pathways and neural wiring of love, emotions and relationships. It is a fascinating reading, very informative, and I think it ties very well next to Levine’s In an Unspoken Voice, and Porge’s Polyvagal theory. It was also the authors of this book that gave the name to limbic resonance. Following the triune brain model, they talk most of all of the importance of the limbic brain and our emotional world for our survival as a species. I disagree with their agreement that medication is sometimes necessary for changing one’s brain, as we know giving the body the fuel it is made to burn and practicing EE regularly, can go a LONG way with that. They also talk a lot about the benefits of therapy, and I am starting to be skeptical about the whole idea myself. It seems to me that therapists in most instances are currently replacing former strong ties between family (and extended family) members and friendships. Not that therapy is not necessary and helpful in some situations, but who the therapist is will make a lot of difference I think.

So here's some excerpts from the book, the first about the limbic brain:

Humanity’s second or limbic brain drapes itself around the first [reptilian] with a languid ease. Within its smooth curves, however, lies a company of neural gadgets with tongue twisting appellations. The limbic list sounds like the incantation of a magus: hippocampus, fornix, amygdale, septum, cingulated gyrus, perirhinal and perihipocampal regions.

Early mammals evolved from small, lizardish reptiles. The peculiar mammalian innovation – carrying developing young within a warm-blooded body rather than leaving them outside in eggs - had been established well before an errant asteroid rammed the planet and put the chill on the dinosaurs. […]

High school biology draws the distinction between reptile and mammal along somatic lines: mammals sprout hair rather than scales; they are self-heating, while reptiles rely on the sun to regulate body temperature; they give birth to babies, not eggs. But MacLean [father of the triune brain hypothesis] pointed out that this classification overlooks a major brain difference. As mammals split off from the reptilian line, a fresh neural structure blossomed within their skulls. This brand new brain transformed not just the mechanics of reproduction but also the organismic orientation toward offspring. Detachment and disinterest mark the parental attitude of the typical reptile, while mammals can enter into subtle and elaborate interactions with their young.

Mammals bear their young live; they nurse, defend and rear them while they are immature. Mammals in other words, take care of their own. Rearing and caretaking are so familiar to humans that we are apt to take them for granted, but these capacities were once novel – a revolution in social evolution. The most common reaction a reptile has to its young is indifference; it lays its eggs and walks (or slithers) away. Mammals form close-knit, mutually nurturant social groups – families – in which members spend time touching and caring for one another. Parents nourish and safeguard their young, and each other, from the hostile world outside their group. A mammal will risk and sometimes lose its life to protect a child or mate from attack. A garter snake or a salamander watches the death of its kin with an unblinking eye.

The limpic system also permits mammals to sing to their children. Vocal communication between a mammal and offspring is universal. Remove a mother from her litter of kittens or puppies and they begin an incessant yowling – the separation cry – whose shrill distress drills into the ears of any normal human being. But take a baby Komodo dragon away from its scaly progenitor, and it stays quiet. Immature Komodos do not broadcast their presence because Komodo adults are avid cannibals. A lifesaving vacuum of silence stretches between a reptilian mother and young. Advertising vulnerability makes sense only for those animals whose brains can conceive a parental protector.

And mammals can play with one another, an activity unique to animals processing limbic hardware. […] What in the world do activities like these accomplish? … why do all kinds of mammals want to frolic, gambol, tumble and roughhouse? For a mute mammal, play is physical poetry: it provides the permissible way, as Robert Frost said poems do, of saying one thing and meaning another. By the grace of their limbic brains, mammals find such exultant metaphor irresistible.

The book goes on to say how the limbic system is the seat of our emotions, explains what are emotions and why are they necessary (in the evolution scheme of things). Also how our limbic brains are affected by and synchronized with those around us.

In its present form, the limbic brain is not only the seat of dreams, but also the center of advanced emotionality. The primordial purpose of the limbic brain was to monitor the external world and the internal bodily environment, and to orchestrate their congruence. What one sees, hears, feels and smells is fed into the limbic brain, and so is data about body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, digestive processes, and scores of other somatic parameters. The limbic brain stands at the convergence of these two information streams; it coordinates them and fine-tunes physiology to prime the body for the outside world.

Some of these modulations are immediate, such as changes in sweating, breathing or heart rate. The limbic brain affects these alterations through its connections to the control centers of the reptilian brain. Other bodily changes of limbic origin are longer lasting: its outputs to the endocrine system allow emotional states to affect global bodily functions like immune regulation and metabolism. The neocortical brain, although a latecomer to the emotional scene, also receives limbic directives. These influence the tone of symbolic activities, like language and strategic operations, like action planning. And the limbic brain orchestrates brain changes that serve a purely communicative role – in response to limbic stimulation, small muscles on the mammalian face contract in precise configurations. The face is the only place in the body where muscles connect directly to skin. The sole purpose of this arrangement is to enable the transmission of a flurry of expressive signals.

[…]

A given limbic brain arrives at conclusions based on the collaboration of its genetically specified wiring scheme and past experience of similar situations.

[…]

The limbic brain is another delicate physical apparatus that specializes in detecting and analyzing just one part of the physical world – the internal states of other mammals. Emotionality is the social sense organ of limbic creatures,…, enables a mammal to sense the inner states and the motives of the mammals around him. […]

Within the effulgence of their new brain, mammals developed a capacity we call limbic resonance – a symphony of mutual exchange and internal adaptation whereby two mammals become attuned to each other’s inner states.[…] To the animals capable of bridging the gabs between minds, limbic resonance is the door to communal connection. Limbic resonance supplies the wordless harmony we see everywhere but take for granted – between mother and infant, between a boy and his dog, between lovers holding hands across a restaurant table. […] Because limbic states can leap between minds, feelings are contagious, while notions are not. If one person germinates an ingenious idea, it’s no surprise that those in the vicinity fail to develop the same concept spontaneously. But the limbic activity of those around us draws our emotions into almost immediate congruence. That’s why a movie viewed in a theatre of thrilled fans is electrifying, when its living room version disappoints – it’s not the size of the screen or the speakers (as the literal-minded home electronics industry would have it) – it’s the crowd that releases storytelling magic, the essential, communal, multiplied wonder. The same limbic evocation sends waves of emotion rolling through a throng, making scattered individuals into a unitary, panic-stricken herd or hate-filled lynch mob.

And that’s one of the examples of limbic resonance that we need to be aware of and try to not get swept by it. Later in the book the authors talk about how our own memory of actual events can be compromised by the faulty memory of those around us, especially people we are connected to. As they write,

our minds are in turn pulled by the emotional magnets of those close to us, transforming any landscape we happen to contemplate and painting it with the colors and textures they see.

to be continued...

 

[Alana]

However, as stated before, limbic resonance is also vital for survival, especially for infants of the mammalian group. The authors cite a horrible experiment undertaken by a 13th century emperor of southern Italy, Frederic II, who in his crazy mind thought that he could find out the inborn language of mankind if he raised children who never heard a spoken word. He had women bathe, change and feed the infants, but no one was allowed to talk to them or prattle with them. The experiment did not produce any results because all children died before they reached talking age. In the 13th century this monarch proved (in such a horrible way) what the scientists of today are learning by experimentation and observation: that “children could not live without clappings of hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments”. The limbic connection with their primary caregivers keep them alive.

They go on to cite several experiments and studies from humans, primates and rats, that show how the connection of mother and child and the types of mothering in early life has long lasting effects on the child and predicts their emotional traits in adult years. Ainswoth’s theory of attachment is mentioned, where her clinical observations and followup after many years showed her how

a mother who had been consistently attentive, responsive, and tender to her infant raised a secure child, who used his mother as a safe haven from which to explore the world. He was upset and fussy when he left him and reassured and joyful when she came back. A cold, resentful, rigid mother produced an insecure avoidant child, who displayed indifference to his mother’s departure and often pointedly ignored her upon return, turning his back or crawling away to a suddenly fascinating toy in the corner. The baby of a mother distracted or erratic in her attentions became an insecure avoidant toddler, clutching at his mother when they were together, dissolving into wails and shrieks when the two were separated, and remaining inconsolable after their reunion.

As the children matured, mother’s parenting aptitude predicted more and more budding personality traits. Babies of responsive mothers developed into grade-schoolers who were happy, socially competent, resilient, percistent, likable, and empathic with others. They had more friends, were relaxed about intimacy, solved problems on their own when they could, and sought help when they needed it. Infants reared by the cold mothers grew up to be distant, difficult-to-reach kids who were hostile to authority, shunned togetherness, and wouldn’t ask for comfort particularly when they were hurt. They often had a mean streak and seemed to take pleasure in provoking and upsetting other children. The offspring of the unpredictable mothers metamorphosed into children who were socially inept, timid, hypersensitive, and lacking in confidence. Hungry for attention and easily frustrated, they frequently asked for assistance with simple tasks that should have been within their competence.

[…]

Ainsworth found no correlation between the length of time a mother spent attending to her child and his ultimate emotional health. The securely attached children were not necessarily the infants who were taken up into their mother’s arms most frequently or held the longest. Ainsworth observed instead that secure attachment resulted when a child was hugged when he wanted to be hugged and put down when he wanted to be put down. When he was hungry, his mother knew it and fed him; when he began to tire, his mother felt it and eased his transmission to sleep by tucking him into his bassinet. Wherever a mother sensed her baby’s inarticulate desires and acted on them, not only was their mutual enjoyment greatest, but the outcome was, years later, a secure child.

By the grace of what miraculous intermediary do mothers know when to approach the infant and when to let him be, when a baby needs the warmth of her embrace and when he needs room to breathe? Limbic resonance gives her the means to that telepathy. By looking into his eyes and becoming attuned to his inner states, a mother can reliably intuit her baby’s feelings and needs.

The above study does not take into account each child’s different temperament, so I wonder about that. It was fascinating to read though the attack that the first attachment theories in psychology received from the Freudians, who claimed (and continue to) that picking a child when he cries reinforces bad habits, manipulative behaviour and what not. Half a chapter is later dedicated to why it is better for the overall health of infants to share their beds with their parents the first months of their lives and why it is imperative from an evolutionary point of view. Parents might want to read this book. Again the Freudians have a lot to say against this practice, but as the authors state:

Independence emerges naturally not from frustrating and discouraging dependence, but from satiating dependence. Children rely heavily on parents, to be sure. And when they are done depending, they move on – to their own beds, houses and lives.

Also there’s a lot about how both parents, through their early interactions with the child, help him sense himself and others and teach him how to relate to the world for the rest of his life. If not, the child becomes an adult unable to tell for himself who he is or to read the emotions of others. It is noted of course that new experiences, work on the self (therapy in the book) and interactions with others can change those early structures of relatedness carved early on our limbic brain, so there’s always hope for the willing.

There’s a whole chapter dedicated on romantic relationships, so here’s some experts that I found interesting:

The simple equations of love. Like this: relationships live on time. They devour it the way that bees feed on pollen or aerobic cells on oxygen: with an unbending singularity of purpose and no possibility of compromise or substitution. Relatedness is a physiologic process that, like digestion or bone growth, admits no plausible acceleration. And so the skill of becoming and remaining attuned to another’s emotional rhythms requires a solid investment of years.

Americans have grown used to the efficiencies of modern life: microwave ovens, laser price scanners, number-crunching computers, high speed internet access. Why should relationships be any different? Shouldn’t we be able to compress them into less time that they took in the old days, ten or a hundred or a thousand years ago? The unequivocal limbic No takes our culture by surprise. The modern American is genuinely puzzled when affiliations evaporate from inattention. Every new second of togetherness reestablishes the terms of a relationship. But cultural mythology imbues social ties with the clumsy durability of things – once attained, always attainable; once established, easy to get back to weeks, months, years later. The truth is only slightly less dire than the words of playwright Jean Giraudoux: “If two people who love each other let a single instant wedge between them, it grows – it becomes a month, a year, a century; it becomes too late”.

[…]

People differ in their proficiency at tracing the outlines of another self, and thus their ability to love also varies. A child’s early experience teaches this skill in direct proportion to his parent’s ability to know him. A steady limpic connection with a resonant parent lays down emotional expertise. A child can then look inside someone else, map an emotional vista, and respond to what he senses. Skewed Attractors impair a person’s ability to love freely and well. [or be a good attentive mother as we saw earlier] His heart’s gaze, in the manner of one whose eyes do not properly focus, will have the unsettling habit of looking beyond and behind the person in front of him. A heart thus displaced falters in its efforts to meet another’s rhythms, to catch another’s tempo and melody in the duet of love.

[…]

Loving is limbically distinct from in love. Loving is mutuality, loving is synchronous attunement and modulation. As such, adult love depends critically upon knowing the other. In love demands only the brief acquaintance necessary to establish an emotional genre but does not demand that the book of the beloved’s soul be pursued from preface to epilogue. Loving derives from intimacy, the prolonged and detailed surveillance of a foreign soul.

[…]

Because loving is reciprocal physiologic influence, it entails a deeper and more literal connection than most realize. Limbic regulation affords lovers the ability to modulate each other’s emotions, neurophysiology, hormonal status, immune function, sleep rhythm and stability. If one leaves on a trip, the other might suffer insomnia, a delayed menstrual cycle, a cold that would have been fought off in the fortified state of togetherness.

The neurally ingrained attractors of one lover warp the emotional virtuality of the other, shifting emotional perceptions – what he feels, sees, knows. When somebody loses his partner and says a part of him is gone, he is more right than he thinks. A portion of his neural activity depends on the presence of that other living brain. Without it, the electric interplay that makes up him has changed. Lovers hold keys to each other’s identities, and they write neurostructural alterations into each other’s networks. Their limbic tie allows each to influence who the other is and becomes.

[That is why is so imperative that we make a right choice to who will connect to!]

Mutuality has tumbled into undiscovered obscurity by the primacy our society places on the art of the deal. The prevailing myth reaching most contemporary ears is this: relationships are 50-50. When one person does one nice thing for the other, he is entitled to an equally pleasing benefit – the sooner the better, under the terms of this erroneous dictum. The physiology of love is no barter. Love is simultaneous mutual regulation, wherein each person meets the needs of the other, because neither can provide for his own. Such a relationship is not 50-50 – it’s 100-100. each takes perpetual care of the other, and, within concurrent reciprocity, both thrive. For those who attain it, the benefits of deep attachment are powerful – regulated people feel centered, whole, alive. With their physiology stabilized from the proper source, they are resilient to the stresses of daily life, or even to those of extraordinary circumstance.

Because relationships are mutual, partners share a single fate; no action benefits one and harms the other. The hard bargainer, who thinks he can win by convincing his partner to meet his needs while circumventing hers, is doomed. Withholding reciprocation cripples a healthy partner’s ability to nourish him; it poisons the well from which she draws the sustenance she means to give. A couple shares in one process, one dance, one story. Whatever improves that one benefits both; whatever detracts hurts and weakens both lives.

Modern amorists are often taken aback at the prospect of investing in a relationship with no guarantee for reward. It is precisely that absence however, that separates gift from shrewdness. Love cannot be extracted, commanded, demanded or wheedled. It can only be given.

A culture wise in love’s ways would understand a relationship’s demand for time. It would teach the difference between in love and loving. It would impart to its members the value of the mutuality on which their lives depend. A culture versed in the workings of emotional life would encourage and promote the activities that that sustain health – togetherness with one’s partner and children; homes, families, and communities of connectedness. Such a society would guide its inhabitants to the joy that can be found at the heart of attachment – what Bertrand Russell called “in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined.”

The author’s state a few time that they are aware that their message, which stands in opposition with today’s emphasis on individuality/I can make it on my own/I don’t need anyone stance, will upset a few readers, but they are fine with it. They also state how our social institutions and society in general are built without taking in to account our biology, our physical and emotional needs, which results in personal and social pathologies. As they say:

Thwarted attachment and limbic disconnection thus encourage superficiality and narcissism

To which I would add, "and allow psychopathy to bloom, dominate and ponerize". They are critical of today’s world, the medical establishment, and those in positions of power, but they don't mention psychopaths, though they allude to them throughout the book via examples of people whose limbic brain does not work as it should.

All in all, I recommend it!