cjsmith: (cjlo joe1)
cjsmith ([personal profile] cjsmith) wrote2002-04-22 09:10 pm

A General Theory of Love

I'm reading this book, and will post my thoughts about it here, piece by piece.

LJ is such a versatile medium. :-)

Chapter One

"Poetry transpires at the juncture between feeling and understanding -- and so does the bulk of emotional life." Makes me want to try my hand at poetry! Wonder how badly I'd do. Some of my prose might be poetry if I just put lots more line breaks in it... Not sure. But I think of myself as someone with lots of reasoning ability and lots of emotions :-) so maybe the art would work once I gained some skill at the craft.

"If we only knew where and how to look, we should be able to find emotional laws whose actions a person could no more resist than he could the force of gravity if he fell off a cliff." I like the idea of looking for these laws. Why hasn't anyone else thought of that? Were we all so sure that emotions had no governing laws? What then did we think governed emotions? I love it when I ask myself a question like this and I find I don't even know what I think. It's like asking what color I see in my blind spot.

[no specific quote] I am relieved by how little they respect Freud's structure. I think the dude was a crackpot. A pioneer, to be sure, since he thought the psyche was studiable -- but he didn't study it with rigor. He discarded any data not fitting his theories. (He discarded an entire sex because they didn't fit his theories.) Thank goodness SOMEone else out there (three degreed psychiatrists, no less!) thinks so too.

"Man is a credulous animal and must believe something. In the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones." -- Bertrand Russell. Hmm. How often do I do this?

"In the 1990s, the collision of pharmacological efficacy with psychoanalytic explanations all but reduced the latter to flinders." Hmm. I'm not going to be satisfied with a wholly chemical answer here. But I suspect that's not what they're going to give...

"As neuroscience unlocks the secrets of the brain, startling insights into the nature of love become possible. [...][I]f that's not the secret of life, then we don't know what is." Great quote. :-) The nature of love as the secret of life. Well, I guess I don't think it's EVERYthing, but it sure is a big chunk of what I might call the secret of life. If life had a textbook, love should have a couple thick chapters.

[identity profile] joedecker.livejournal.com 2002-04-23 07:16 am (UTC)(link)
"If we only knew where and how to look, we should be able to find emotional laws whose actions a person could no more resist than he could the force of gravity if he fell off a cliff." I like the idea of looking for these laws. Why hasn't anyone else thought of that?


I'm not sure that people haven't, but I think they run into more variation in people than they do in electrons. I don't remember any discussion about any emotion on any relationship mailing list that hasn't included at least one "YMMV". I think this makes strict laws more difficult to find, although still perhaps quite real, practical, etc.


He discarded any data not fitting his theories


I'm with you on this, although I find there's often an element of this in real science. I recall seeing a page of Milliken's real notebook while doing experiments on the charge of an electron (he later showed it was quantized, with a page scracthed out marked something like "data no good". :) (I agree with your take on Freud, but had to throw in this little tidbit.)


Keep posting this stuff, it sounds interesting!







[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2002-04-23 09:33 am (UTC)(link)
I'm not sure that people haven't, but I think they run into more variation in people than they do in electrons. I don't remember any discussion about any emotion on any relationship mailing list that hasn't included at least one "YMMV". I think this makes strict laws more difficult to find, although still perhaps quite real, practical, etc.

Maybe it just means we need to look at a deeper level for such laws. We found a heckuva lot of variation in, say, various physical substances, before figuring out the atomic and subatomic particles.

I'm with you on this, although I find there's often an element of this in real science.

True enough. And there are good reasons for it at times, too. I'm just ticked at Freud because of how he screwed over multiple generations by pushing his made-up, harmful stuff.

[identity profile] gs.livejournal.com 2002-04-23 12:38 pm (UTC)(link)
hey run into more variation in people than they do in electrons

...and...

We found a heckuva lot of variation in, say, various physical substances, before figuring out the atomic and subatomic particles

Exactly! People are more complicated than electrons, because two electrons are more complicated than one electron, and people have way more electrons (and other stuff) than that. But that doesn't mean we should try to find answers. Some of the best questions may have no answers, but the things we discover along the way as we search for an answer, can more than cover the trip expenses.

I really like their perspective on Freud. Nice try, thanks for playing, here's a bunch of information you didn't have, we'll take it from here.

I liked this book a lot...but then you knew that already, CJ.

I like the attempt to find the underlying principles of (human) emotions. The title is a bit of an overstatement, if you're expecting a complete theory, but it seems like it headed in a very useful direction. The book has helped me clarify some of my thoughts around emotions and relationships, and it continues to do so as I continue to absorb its implications.

[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2002-04-23 01:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Some of the best questions may have no answers, but the things we discover along the way as we search for an answer, can more than cover the trip expenses.

Good way to put it. I'll see how well I think that applies to the rest of the book as I have a chance to read further. (This posting-while-reading is a slow way to do it!)

I really like their perspective on Freud. Nice try, thanks for playing, here's a bunch of information you didn't have, we'll take it from here.

I have a bit more animosity than that :-) but I like their take too.

The title is a bit of an overstatement

Somehow I figured it would be. But that's fine. Whatever I get out of it, I'll chew on, and maybe use as well, and that's certainly worth the investment of reading the book.

[identity profile] gs.livejournal.com 2002-04-23 01:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I have a bit more animosity than that :-)

I can understand that. And I don't necessarily disagree. I have a limited knowledge of Freud. I've always felt I should learn a bit more about his theories. Until I read AGTOL, that is. Now, he would simply be interesting to study from an historical perspective, to understand the impact he's had on thought and society, but not from a scientific perspective.

I've got a lot of other things to do these days, however :-)

[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2002-04-23 01:52 pm (UTC)(link)
I would have mild interest but will probably never get around to it. Life holds too many other, much more interesting things. And I, too, am busy lately. :-)

[identity profile] gs.livejournal.com 2002-04-23 03:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh really! Did someone send you a big long list of "Things To Do" too?

:-)

(why do most of my posts have some weird characters appended to them? I'm ending this comment with a right parenthesis)

[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2002-04-23 03:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh really! Did someone send you a big long list of "Things To Do" too?

What a coincidence! :-)

why do most of my posts have some weird characters appended to them?

I don't know. Are you updating directly from the web page, or using some kind of client? (Can you even use the client for comments?)

[identity profile] yoak.livejournal.com 2002-04-23 05:36 pm (UTC)(link)
One psychologist that has produced good work in this vein is Edith Packer. I haven't consumed any of her work in a *long* time, but searching on the net and looking over the list of stuff there, this (http://www.capitalism.net/edith.htm) is the closest match. Um... I can't make it link directly to the section of the page. "Understanding the Subconscious" is the one I mean. Clicking on the "excerpt" link makes it sound clinical and focussed on neurotic dysfunction, whereas the work I remember was more generally descriptive of healthy functioning.

But anyway... I thought you might appreciate the pointer. If you decide to follow it up, let me know if you think it is valuable.