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| Authors | Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon |
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| Published | 2000 (Random House) |
A General Theory of Love is a book about the science of humanemotions andbiological psychiatry written by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, psychiatric professors at theUniversity of California, San Francisco, and was first published by Random House in 2000. It has since been reissued twice, with new editions appearing in 2001 and 2007.
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.
A General Theory of Love has been compared[by whom?] to the work ofSteven Pinker andOliver Sacks.[citation needed] Since its first publication, the book has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean, Latvian, Croatian, andPersian.[1]
The book surveys scientific understanding ofemotions and particularlyintimacy andlove, fromFreud through modernneuroscience, with a focus on the emerging understanding of the limbic brain and the development ofpersonality. 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 thelimbic system (hippocampus,amygdala, anterior thalamic nuclei, andlimbic cortex) is affected by those closest to us (limbic resonance) and synchronizes with them (limbic regulation) in a way that has profound implications for personality and lifelongemotional health. 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 toindividual andsocial pathologies[broken anchor].[2]
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 thetriune brain as defined byPaul D. MacLean, a model that has been variously categorized as obsolete,[citation needed] imprecise or unnecessary.[6]