What is Love?
Valentine"s Day—thoughts turn to, or are supposed to turn to "love" but what is it, does it actually exist, and can social science help?
There"s a seemingly endless list of descriptions and definitions of love from Shakespeare"s "as a fever, longing still" to Erich Segal"s hopelessly unpragmatic "never having to say you"re sorry". Traditionally, love has been considered so complex and mysterious that the whole breathless, smouldering, messy business was left to writers, fifties crooners—and the occasional Irish boy band. But, not any more. These days, psychologists are keen to nail down that which was once left to the poets, and lay bear what love is, how it works and why it exists in the first place.
In his recent book,
Love Sick,
clinical psychologist Frank Tallis gives credence to popular term "madly in love" by setting out the similarities between falling in love and being mentally ill. Love, he argues, is characterised by mania (heightened emotions, inflated self-esteem and extravagant present giving), depression (tearfulness and loss of concentration) and extreme mood swings (on a high when beloved calls and in the depths when beloved doesn"t). Given the manic depressive symptoms, you wonder why we chase love rather than run screaming in the opposite direction.
Love as mental illness is all very intriguing. But it comes wrapped Jn an unsettling suggestion. Tallis and others have proposed that love might eventually be treated—with a course of cognitive behaviour therapy—as if it were a sickness. More evidence that we live in a society where pills cushion us against all life"s ups and downs? It all seems a very long way from love as the poets saw it.
Tallis, to be fair, insists that he accepts love as part of the human condition. His point is that for some people the effects of love are extremely debilitating. He claims to have patients who present with depression or anxiety only to discover they are suffering for love.
While Tallis deals with the symptoms of the "loved up" but confused who pass through his consulting room, neuro-psychology—psychology"s cutting edge—is busy investigating the brain processes that underpin their behaviour.
So what has neuropsychology discovered about that thing popular culture claims drives you insane, tends to be blind and can leave you as enslaved as a coke addict? Well, it"s discovered that all these claims for love are—in neurological terms—pretty accurate.
In 2000, psychology professor Semir Zeki and his colleague Dr Andreas Bartels of University College London used Magnetic Resonance Imaging to scan the brains of 11 female and six male students, who claimed to be "truly, madly and deeply" in love.
When the students were shown photographs of their lovers and friends, Zeki and Bartels discovered that very different areas of the cortex lit up. The researchers were surprised to discover that the "romantic love" brain areas were small compared to those activated by ordinary friendship, remarking in their eventual research paper that it was "fascinating to reflect that the face that launched a thousand ships should have done so through such a limited expanse of cortex".
The second surprise was that the cortical romance zones did not overlap with areas associated with other emotional states such as anger and fear. Instead, the areas for romance were similar to those associated with addiction. As it turns out, the brain activation patterns of the madly-in-love look ever so similar to those of people under the influence of cocaine. So human beings might as well face it, they can indeed be addicted to love. That may soften criticism of Tallis"s talk of treatment.
So love really is blind and irrational, or mad. When we are in its thrall, we are as enslaved as drug addicts and robbed of our ability to make sound judgments about the object of our affections. That explains why our friends can all see that the person we adore is shifty or deadly dull while we are entirely oblivious.
Romantic love, of course, has a shelf life. By comparing the NGF (nerve growth factor) levels of the madly in love with those of established couples and singletons, the researchers concluded that romantic love dies within a year. That"s roughly the time it takes to realise that your beloved will never master screwing the top back on the toothpaste.
We may be shedding new light on how love works, but the questions remains as to why it exists at all. Anthropologist Dr Helen Fisher of Rutgers University, in New Jersey, suggests that love comes in three forms—sexual lust, romantic love and long-term attachment.
In Why We Love:
The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, Fisher argues that each of the three forms of love has its own emotional and motivational system, distinct biochemistry and is linked to its own distinct brain network. Lust, romance and attachment map on to mating, pair-bonding and parenting and Fisher argues each form of love is crucial to the survival of our species.
Lust is driven by sex hormones that Fisher says, "get you out there looking for anything". If this leads to romance, we enter a stage when we can think of nothing but the person we love. We feel exhilarated and have obsessive thoughts about the object of our love.
Fisher argues that the romantic phase, while necessary for a pair to form, doesn"t last because it"s too unstable a state for the rearing of children. Stable, secure long-term attachment is needed for that.
For many sociologists, these theories of love from anthropologists and psychologists miss the point. They point out that the definition of love has varied through history and that the concept of falling in love, for example, did not exist until the 16th century. For sociologist Bernadette Bawin-Legros romantic love doesn"t boil down to timeless brain activation patterns and evolutionary imperatives. Romantic love is a narrative that has long-dominated popular culture. It is fragile in its contemporary form, she argues, because that form involves the impossible union of two ideals—fusion with another and the modern aspiration for autonomy and self-development. Whatever the desires of dreamy romantics for love to last forever, those two ideals are simply irreconcilable.
Comprehension