Review by New York Times Review
IN "THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY," Ambrose Bierce defined love as "a temporary insanity curable by marriage." Enter Sue Johnson, a clinical psychologist and couples therapist who says that relationships are a basic human need and that "a stable, loving relationship is the absolute cornerstone of human happiness and general well-being." To repair ailing partnerships, she has developed a new approach in marriage counseling called Emotionally Focused Therapy, or EFT, which she introduces in her new book, "Love Sense." EFT draws on the work of the psychiatrist John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, who argued that humanity has evolved a strong, physiologically-based attachment system that drives the infant to attach to the mother. In the 1960s and '70s, he and the psychologist Mary Ainsworth put forth the idea that children develop one of three basic styles of attachment that they carry into their adult relationships. Secure individuals grow up knowing they can count on their primary caregivers, so they don't obsessively worry that they will be abandoned by their partners. However, if one's primary childhood caregiver is inattentive, unpredictable or abusive, the individual forms one of two "insecure" attachment styles. Anxious individuals worry constantly that they will be abandoned, so they cling to their partners, seeking reassurance. The avoidant, meanwhile, eschew deep connections to protect themselves from being dependent. Johnson believes EFT can help couples break out of patterns, "interrupting and dismantling these destructive sequences and then actively constructing a more emotionally open and receptive way of interacting." She aims to transform relationships "using the megawatt power of the wired-in longing for contact and care that defines our species," and offers various exercises to restore trust. Most interesting to me was Johnson's brain-scanning study. Before EFT therapy, unhappily married women participating in the study reported considerable pain from an electric shock to the ankle as they held their husbands' hands. After 20 sessions of EFT, however, these now more securely attached women judged their pain as only "uncomfortable" and their brain scans showed no alarm response. Secure attachment appears to change brain function and reduce pain. But Johnson too often focuses on attachment to the exclusion of other "megawatt" brain systems. Remarkably, she lumps romantic love with attachment, saying "adult romantic love is an attachment bond, just like the one between mother and child." In reality, romantic love is associated with a constellation of thoughts and motivations that are strikingly different from those of attachment. My research bears out that humankind evolved distinct but interrelated brain systems for mating and reproduction: the sex drive (to seek a range of partners); feelings of romantic love (to focus one's mating energy on a single partner); and feelings of attachment (to drive our forebears to form a pair-bond to rear their young together). Each brain system is associated with different neurochemicals; each is a powerful drive that still plays a continuing role in partnership stability. Johnson also maintains that adulterers suffer from deteriorating attachment to their partners and stray because they're "unbearably lonely." But there are many reasons for infidelity, and marital dissatisfaction isn't always involved. In one study, 56 percent of adulterous men and 34 percent of unfaithful women reported that their marriages were "happy" or "very happy." Humankind has evolved a mixed reproductive strategy: pair-bonding and (in lesser frequency) clandestine infidelity. We make decisions with our evolved cerebral cortex. But this is a more complex biological inheritance than Johnson proposes. In fact, the 21st-century struggle may be to balance one's drive to attach with one's disposition for autonomy. Research does not support her doomsday prediction either. Johnson regards our age as deeply pessimistic. "When it comes to adult love," she writes, "we appear to be truly lost." But I have found the opposite to be true. Every year I do a national study with the dating site Match.com, in which we poll a representative sample of more than 5,000 Americans (not Match.com members). When, in 2012, we asked married people whether they would remarry their current spouses, 81 percent said yes; 75 percent also reported they were still in love. Moreover, 89 percent of single people believe you can stay married to the same person forever. And I suspect we aren't "ever more cut off from each other in a fast-paced and socially fragmented world." In any public place today, you can see people relentlessly yammering and tapping on their cellphones, suggesting vast networks of attachment. Nevertheless, Johnson has hit upon a core aspect of human nature. The brain circuitry for attachment most likely evolved over four million years ago as our forebears inched onto the open plains of Africa and females began to need partners to help protect them and provide for them as they carried their helpless young. Attachment lives deep in primordial pathways in the brain. And Johnson's impressive work at commandeering this brain system to rehabilitate failing partnerships is an important contribution to those lost in the thicket of unhappy pairbonding. HELEN FISHER is a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and the author, most recently, of "Why Him? Why Her?"
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 9, 2014]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The bestselling author of Hold Me Tight makes an admirable attempt at exploring relationship dynamics through contemporary psychology and neuroscience, but the results at times are thin. . The first few sections, for example, are devoted to legitimizing emotions through facts and experiments, but despite piling up lots of data, Johnson rarely puts it to use in her analyses of some of the most common relationship problems couples face. She breaks down partner types into three categories: "secure, anxious, and avoidant." Johnson deciphers the relationships of those who fall under these categories, encouraging those feeling insecure that they in fact can become stable partners, though it often feels like a partner is being blamed for their category diagnosis. She believes wholeheartedly in the flexibility of relationships and their vital role in a successful life, reaffirming the success of her own form of relationship therapy called Emotional Focused Therapy. As readers are slowly introduced to the specifics of this method, Johnson tries to convey its power and efficacy through stories of former patients. Unfortunately, the dialogue is too stilted to pass for real conversations. Nevertheless, the examples are varied and general enough to serve as conversation starters for those in need of relationship help. Agent: Miriam Altshuler, Miriam Altshuler Literary Agency. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A self-help book from a clinical psychologist promoting a model of treatment called Emotionally Focused Therapy. Johnson (Clinical Psychology/Alliant International Univ.; Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, 2008, etc.), one of the founders of EFT in the 1980s, credits her approach to couples therapy to the theories concerning attachment patterns in infants developed by psychiatrist John Bowlby decades earlier. In the first part of the book, the author argues that through clinical studies, laboratory experiments and applied therapies, science has now revealed that love, vital to our existence, is not only understandable, but also repairable. In other words, love makes sense, hence the title. In a chapter on the brain, Johnson looks at research into the neurochemistry of love, especially the so-called cuddle hormone, oxytocin. In another, on the body, she examines the connection between attachment and sexuality. In the second part of the book, the narrative's core, Johnson shows EFT in action, with the author, a practicing couples therapist, presenting the cases of various distressed couples in therapy who are learning how to recognize their attachment issues, understand their emotions, and work to repair and enhance their relationships. All chapters conclude with exercises for readers to try either alone or with a partner. In the third part, Johnson offers readers a sweet love story with a happy ending and then broadens her perspective to a view of love in the 21st century. It is, she opines optimistically, a time when a growing awareness of humanity's interdependence on this small planet is leading people to find ways to connect and cooperate--or as the author would put it, to love and be loved. A readable combination of research findings and case studies, filled with good cheer and practical advice.]]]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
