Focus 580; A General Theory of Love

Good morning and welcome back to the second hour of focus 580 This is our telephone talk program My name's David Inge. Glad to have you with us. Well tomorrow is Valentine's Day One day at least that we set aside to talk about love and to display our affection for the significant others in our life. So we thought wouldn't be such a bad time to talk a little bit about love and about what science can tell us about the nature of love and what it is why it is that human beings bond with one another. And we'll be talking this morning with one of the authors of a book that looks at some of this research the book is titled A general theory of love and it's published in paper by vintage. And our guest is Dr. Thomas Lewis. He's an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine. He's also former associate director of the affectation disorders program there. He now divides his time between writing a private practice and teaching at the med school at their university of California San Francisco and he's talking with us by telephone. And as we

talk of course questions are welcome. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line that means it would be a long distance call. Use that number and we'll pay for it. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 wy L.L. toll free 800 1:58 W while Dr. Lewis. Hello good morning. Thank you very much for talking with us. Oh it's my pleasure. It seems interesting just right from the beginning that you one might have to say that. You would wonder given the fact that love is something that's difficult to define. It's difficult to even talk about to put into words people have been trying for a long long time to find exactly the right words to do that and one would think that and a prize like science which really is interested in things that you can measure and that you can hold in your hand just wouldn't be. Annable to looking at a question

like What is love. Well I think you. You certainly would think that at first blush and in some ways it's surprising that science has anything at all to say about something as seemingly intangible as love. But as science gets better at cracking some of the mysteries of the brain many of our mental processes become amenable to scientific discovery so that we have a better understanding of how speech works of how our motor system works of how vision works and so on that level that may not be surprising that science has a better idea of how feelings work and how love works than we used to because those also come out of the brain and the better we understand the brain the better we can potentially understand those phenomena as well. It's. It certainly seems that in emotional experience various kinds of emotional experience are very nearly universal. That is all people seem to experience emotions and sort of the same kind of emotions and we

understand that. In other people if you for example cite the kind of research that says if you take photographs if you take a picture of someone who is clearly happy and a picture of someone who is clearly in distress and clearly sad you can go around the world and show those pictures to people of different cultures. And if you ask them to describe what that person is experiencing there's there's no question that people just by looking at the facial expression of the other they know that one person is happy and one person you know something really bad something very sad and distressing has happened to that to that other person so it seems that there is indeed something going on that cuts across. Cultural differences everything else and that we all experience anything that's absolutely correct and in fact the first person to suppose that was Charles Darwin and Darwin of course father the theory of evolution was. Convinced that emotions and emotional experience also comes from our evolutionary past. And

he was convinced that because of that emotions it should be the same cross-culturally in all human beings just as for instance the structure of the wrist or the knee is the same cross-culturally and in all human beings and he was correct actually in the research that you described there. It certainly proves that that's true that is as far as we know human beings everywhere on the surface of the planet have the same emotions. They have the same emotional expressions and we can all recognise the emotional expressions of other people effortlessly. So we're born with that innate kind of communication system that allows us to interpret behavior and communicate with people when we don't share a verbal or spoken language with them. And do we explain this by saying that is that. Being able to understand another person's emotional state is just it's something that is very important. If if we think that it's important for people to kind of hang together in groups and for people to feel that I have a stake in the survival of the other person

that then having some understanding of another person's experience is important for that. Well that's quite true that animals of all sorts are designed so that they have specialized sensory systems in their brain to process. Just the kinds of information that are most important for their survival so that snakes for instance can see into the infrared part of the spectrum which allows them to spot rats or mice that are hidden in the grass. Bats of course use the echo location of their sonar systems to navigate in the dark. In our brains also have they have a very specialized sensory system that enables our survival and that includes the ability to sense emotions. And there are vast portions of the brain that are dedicated just towards processing facial expressions looking being able to look at another person's face and analyze the contractions of muscles in the position of the head and the pupillary dilatation and to interpret that information to make sense of it and understand effortlessly it just in a millisecond what is going on inside another person is that person angry or wistful

or sad or happy or joyous. And that that turns out to be vital to our survival and for some surprising reasons. Not only that it helps us get along but because that kind of emotional communication for better or worse turns out to be a basic survival ingredient for human beings. If you take that away from people their bodies don't function very well and in some cases it actually kills them. It's interesting a just just last week talked with a psychologist a developmental psychologist named Alison Gopnik who was here to talk about some of her work and one of things that she talked about was that it was baby's abilities to mimic facial expressions and the fact that it's something that they seem to be hardwired for that he has within an hour after the time they're born they are able to repeat it you know reflect if you wear the classic experiments was that to with this newborn if you

stick out your tongue at the baby the baby will stick out his or her tongue back and you have to think that that's that ability is simply something that we are born with and that it's part of this business of. A stablish in the bond with the the adult caretaker which as far as the baby's concerned is pretty important. It's absolutely vital and you're quite right it's interesting to note that there are so many things that babies can to do that seem very important to survival they can't feed themselves they can't walk or run away if danger looms. But the thing that they can do and which they are highly predisposed to do is to look other people in the eye and in the face and study faces and interact with other people emotionally and to a surprising extent. This turns out to be actually as physiologically vital to a baby's survival as food or water. And then in several experiments that have been performed by historical accident not by design it's been clearly demonstrated that if you take human infants and you get. Them food and water

and clothing and physical warmth. But you deny them emotional communication with other human beings that almost all of those infants die because emotional nurturance and contact actually is vital to an infant survival as food or water. That's where it's interesting that these studies have sort of not intentional studies in a way but but some rather famous studies have looked at orphanages for example big places where they were taking care of babies and maybe for whatever reason they didn't have enough staff they didn't want to transmit disease they were taking care of all the kids physical needs they were feeding them they were keeping them warm they were keeping them clean they were changing their diapers but that was about all. No one picked up the baby no one cood to them no you know there wasn't a lot of physical contact all the things that we hope parents will do. And even though the basic physical needs were taken care of the children withered. Absolutely in it as you mention this was most prominently conducted on an unknowing basis in the early part of the century when doctors were very impressed by the germ

theory of disease and they felt that an orphaned infants and young children would be much better off if people didn't breathe on them and didn't touch them. And so they were sequestered away in these nurseries where they were cared for in terms of food and water but they were not held or picked up or spoken to or played with. And the mortality rates were appalling acts in those nurseries between 75 and 100 percent of the infants subjected to those conditions simply withered away and died they succumb to infection infection or they simply didn't gain weight even though they were fed and just kind of weathered right out of existence. If we're talking I shouldn't do so. Again our guest and we have a caller We'll get to in the continued Salk about the book a general theory of love. Looking at some of the scientific research that has been done trying to look at him and seeing the question What is love all about and why it is. Why is it that human beings experience it. Why is it some people seem not to have much luck finding out and why is it that when we're apart from the people that are important to us it's it may indeed feel physically

painful. Our guest is Dr. Thomas Lewis. He is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco and is one of the authors of this book which is available in print and published by vintage. We have a caller in Urbana to talk with will do that right now on our line number one. Hello. Hello. Yes as I was listening it come how came to my mind to think about what's the relationship between empathy and love. Well that's a very interesting question. Empathy actually probably is almost synonymous with that sensory capacity that we were talking about earlier with the capacity to discern what's going on inside somebody else. It different from sympathy which is the ability to feel sorry for somebody based on your ability to discern what's going on inside them. But empathy really is the kind of emotional analog of vision. I can look out with

my eyes and I can see the landscape with empathy I can look into another person and experience what's going on for that person which may be quite different than what's going on for me. I was thinking of it too because I have read about one of the problems with criminals is that they some of them apparently aren't able to experience empathy. That's it. That's a fascinating question you're absolutely right. Fascinating observation that one of the fundamental things that appears to be wrong with sociopathic criminals is that they are insensitive to emotional communication they're there in a sense blind to the emotional dimension or empathy so that they don't feel another person's pain it doesn't mean anything to them anymore than color you know means much to a blind person. So that they're evil and easily able to whack somebody over in the head or to shoot them or to murder their children. And it doesn't bother them because they don't discern any of the emotional distress from the other person it doesn't register doesn't mean anything.

And for the next question is in the development area as children. What the implications are for that and whether either of development. Can be influenced in that way or whether there's just something missing in those people. Well development in children certainly can be tremendously influenced by their emotional environment. And we know now that one of the things that relationships do is regulate our physiology is when two people are in a relationship they're regulating each other's body in important ways each other's immune system heart rate and so forth. One of the things that happens to children when they're in a relationship is that their brain development is regulated so that that's one of the things that children can get out of a relationship with parents is that it's actually necessary for the proper development of the brain and children who are subjected to emotional deprivation often do not develop normally in terms of their brain function. And one of the functions they don't develop is that empathic function that for

instance you may have heard of the. Children in Romanian orphanages in the 1990s where they were warehoused in situations that were similar in terms of emotional deprivation that they got food and water and clothing but very little interaction with adults even when those children were adopted into loving families. Some of those children actually can't be rescued from that. That state of emotional deprivation that they they again appear to be empathy lest they appear not to understand what it is to communicate emotionally with another person they appear to be tone deaf to emotions and to emotional distress and other people. And that's a sad case of development gone awry in those kids. Thank you very much. It certainly seems to have implications. Oh thank you know that is a wonderful topic for me. Thanks for the call. Let's talk with someone else this caller is also in Urbana line too. Oh and yes I'm speaking about the

universality of facial expression. I'm I'm wondering about that the visual aspect of say the emotions of ecstasy and playing. I know that some people when they look at the if you know the painting have sidewall of the scream. They don't know you know if they don't know the title they're not sure whether that it's playing are apt to say. And do you have any speculations about why these expressions are so closely resemble each other. Well one of the interesting things is that emotional communication occurs across a variety of sensory modalities. So part of it's a visual part of it is clearly auditory part of it is not only facial expression but changes in facial expression body language in terms of posture of the limbs of the

trunk of the head and so forth and also the kind of rhythmic evolution of those. Of those changes which is very difficult to capture in the still image or timely autograph of a living person may well transmit a lot more detailed sensory information about his or her emotions than a than a single still image. Emotional expressions interestingly enough are not that different from one another. If you look at the difference between even emotions that we think of as very different like anger or sadness. It's a few millimeters difference in the contraction of a couple of muscles here and there in the face. Even the feeling of it I you know ecstasy and paying very close close. I mean I don't think well they certainly certainly can be especially in terms of their intensity that they are two particular emotions that people can experience at a level of intensity which can be almost overwhelming and that maybe one of the thing that registers in the face is the overwhelming intensity

level. Thank thank you thank you. Thanks for the CO. Other questions are welcome. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line good anywhere that you can hear us around Illinois Indiana anywhere in fact the signal will travel and that he's a hundred to two. 2 9 4 5 5 in the book in the beginning part of the book you spend a little bit of time talking about the structure of the brain and about the fact that the brain has different parts and we think of them as older and younger. In an evolutionary sense and it's the older parts of the brain that are that are responsible for some of the most basic functions the fact that we can tend to breathe. And the fact that we respond certain ways perhaps to the danger that we have drives to feed ourselves we have drives to reproduce. And it's the more recent parts of the

brain that have to do with. More of higher order functions things like thinking and language and so forth. Is is part of the reason that it's maybe sometimes a little difficult for us. To think about love to talk about love and to try to figure out what it is. Does that have something to do with the fact that the feelings are in one place and that the words are in another place and having getting those two places together is sometimes a little difficult. That's absolutely correct and it's one of the places where modern neuroscience can provide a satisfying kind of explanation for an experience that human beings have noted for many thousands of years. And of course throughout the recorded history of art and literature and poetry and song many writers and artists have lamented about how difficult it is to figure out what's going on with our feelings and how sometimes how hard it is to express them or give them words or give them a comprehensible framework and the reason is just what you're describing that

feelings and emotions come from brain structures that are about 100 million years old whereas the language and thinking and logic come from brain structures that are at most. A million years old to be generous and really probably several hundred thousand years old would be more accurate. So there's a tremendous gap of time of about 100 million years between the brain structures that create feeling and emotions and love and bonding and the brain structures that are capable of understanding and logic and language and so it did probably even less surprising even that that there are mental experiences in the emotion around that we cannot understand or make proper logical sense of or put into words very easily. In that light that's the place where science can can help explain our experience in those areas. Let's talk with another caller this is in. The person is in Tuscola and it's Line 1. Yes well I got it and I kind of in the middle here. I enjoyed hearing about your. Fight about love and

whatever and it's just something that would benefit someone with dementia probably or not. There are my kind of date. Would love benefit someone with that dimension. It certainly certainly could and does in fact. And again because the brain structures that are destroyed in dementia are the ones that are important in thinking and logic and language often those suffer a terrible loss but the brain structures that are important in feeling emotions are much less affected so that the demented people may not be able to think or remember very well but they can still be quite emotionally responsive. And you often say of course that people with the dementia can be rapidly calmed down by the soothing presence of a family member where nothing else can calm them down. They certainly are sensitive to relationships and some recent data has indicated that nursing home residents for instance some of whom are elderly and have dementia that relationships continue to regulate their physiology in an important way that one of the most

important determinants of nursing home mortality is how many visitors you have which actually turns out to be more important even than how old you are into your mortality so people with with dementia certainly are emotionally responsive and remain sensitive to relationships and expressions of love. Very good. I'll continue to listen to you. Thank you. I think that's that's interesting in that. And I suppose some people might be surprised that it would you know that the presence of a family member might have that effect on someone with dementia if particularly if if the person who's experiencing the dementia seems not to know that that person is their family member. I mean it's good could be that as far as they're concerned they're just another person who would happen to walk in the door. And yet and some level they seem to apparently recognize the connection. That's true and of course one of the difficulties is it's how to assess whether someone with a dementia does recognize somebody else because the dementia may impair their language

function so that they can't say you know hello Fred or I know it's you or something like that. But nevertheless the parts of the brain that retain their function may be capable of registering the presence of that person. And you often find with a person with dementia that one of the most distressing things for them is to be around unfamiliar people. And one of the most calming or soothing things is simply to bring in people when the person is familiar with has a tremendous calming and soothing effect. And if if indeed there is you know it makes you wonder what exactly the nature of the bond is and how this gets communicated if in fact there can be any effect Eve. And though the individual wouldn't recognize the other person so that has to be has to mean that there's something going on some kind of communal communication going on at some other level which which we don't directly observe or a connection say on a

level that we might describe as intuitive rather than explicit. And again many of the explicit kinds of cognitive mental functions would be damaged in dementia but actually a number of very interesting studies have showed that patients with dementia who are incapable of learning explicit information so if you come in the room and say you know today is February 13th and my name is David and leave the room and come back 10 minutes later they don't remember any of those things that even though they're incapable of that kind of learning that they're still capable of intuitive learning that if you expose them to certain emotional situations they can still retain intuition about them. For instance in one experiment a man who had no capacity to remember facts was because of brain damage was exposed to three people in succession one of whom had been instructed to treat him in a nice way one of whom had been instructed to be neutral with him and the third one who hadn't been instructed to treat him in a mean way. And later the three people were brought back

into the room and he was asked if he had ever seen any of them before and he said no. If he can't learn that kind of information. But they said well who would you like to go with. To the store and he picked the nice guy. So that there is emotional information that can still register even in the absence of some of those more explicit cognitive brain function. Let's take another call this someone in listening in southeastern Illinois our line for. Hello. Yeah. I. Could ask you to define your terms to define love. Yes of course that's a tall order. That is a that's a tough question. The love of course is a is a multi dimensional phenomenon. And so any definition I'm going to give us is clearly going to be inadequate in some respects. But I would say an experience a level of love for the word that we use is the feeling there is it's a feeling that you get of being able to send someone else's needs or their feelings and feeling the urge to provide or care for or

nurture the feelings that you find there on a biological level. Love is the operation of a system that's very old that's very deep in our brains which is meant to enable us to read emotional states and other mammals. It's meant to control and regulate our physiology. And it binds us together and binds other mammals together also in mutually regulating. Groups and so on a biological level that's what love is and I gave you a short all inclusive definition. Sure is an extension of the South. Well you know I think that's one thing that it does level of what what what form of the law and an extension of one's own. Well for instance I don't I don't know that there's anything in that definition say about the kind of about the biological regulation that that science has discovered is at the heart of love or relationships that plumbing I mean that I'm

speaking of it as a as a side in the psychological term rather than a physiological term but as a. That's why love is painful is because you you ave a very deep exam when you are making them a part of yourself. You have part of yourself out there which you don't have the control and there are things that and I think that's one reason why love is painful. I think there are others actually including Frances the fact that your brain is wired to experience intense pain when it's deprived of something it needs to live. For instance if you take away someone's oxygen you take their way their water. They begin to suffer almost immediately and when you take away someone's love for their relationship they also begin to suffer in a very painful way. And one of the reasons that is if the brain is well-designed the things that we need to live should feel very good when we get them. And they should feel very

painful when we don't get them. Well maybe you could say that this cell is is this psychological Southey's like the body it needs nourishment it needs nutriment nutrients from the outside. I have cut off the end of the Shard tabs I want to mention one other thing that I. Have not been a fan of that. President Clinton but I found it difficult to like the guy I am because I say I sympathize with him because his mother at his birth dumping on her parents and went off to Little Rock for four years where she found herself another husband unincumbered Bira child and he I I think that one of the explanations were the things that he does it seems on and unexplainable is the fact that the deprivation he has talked of is going to have these grandfather but I've never heard you

mention his grandmother so I don't know that she was satisfactory. Had to do for his mother I mean it if he was giving you know that a mother would ride that would. You know that I could take care of our bad memory imaginary So I don't think he. Was that close to or seem to. Well you're certainly right in that in a general sense I I myself don't know much specific about the about the rearing environment of Mr Clinton but we certainly know in a general sense that children who suffered the loss of one parent or both parents even if it's for not their lifetime it appeared of several years that can exert a very significant psychological and biological effects on children that may have a long lasting effect on their personality in their later actions so you may be on to something. Well what do you what do you think about the sort of the commonplace idea that even if one has a good relationship with one's parent particularly one's mother.

That and maybe even if indeed it is a powerful relationship that somehow for the rest of your life you're trying to recreate that. Well I think that's that's very true. And if if in fact the relationship that you have with your mother is substantially loving it turns out to be a good thing. If you spend your life recreating that because then you can marry someone who is substantially loving and you can have relationships with your own children that are substantially loving and it turns out to be a good thing if the relationship is the pivotal relationship or the mother has an important negative emotional attributes. Then those two can echo down the years of your life as you reenact. We are a little past the midpoint of this part of focus. And I just like to and again introduce our guest We're speaking with Dr. Thomas Lewis. He's assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine also a former associate director of the affix of disorders program there he writes. He has a private

practice also teaches at UC San Francisco at the med school and is one of the authors of a book that explores the territory here we're discussing if you'd like to read more you can look for it it's titled A general theory of love. It's published by vintage in paper. So it's not terribly expensive. Can look forward in the bookstore and the questions are certainly welcome here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. The next caller in line is key and this is line 1. Hello yes or Dr. Lewis there. Yeah I enjoy your commentary Aaron So for us. I got it. Well I guess I don't know where to start almost but it's pertaining to love but all of our friends. Today's Sordo or whatever and see and I lation and so forth. And came home and then they

were so happy to have a family and everything but the problem is. The next generation was like. They turned their head. They didn't continue relationship as far as. Their religion and our chorus. How could you expect. Be it the boys or girls who were home when the others went off the same way and that's why our country's in such a Medland I think. We know you know it sounds ridiculous but the model as a friend he says he just adored his girl in it and he told me he always says I main reason I don't want to marry Aries I said if we ever broke up it would just annihilate me. And I know it sounds really strange. No I think a lot of people think that and and I think that the difficulty with that

is that it's true that there is tremendous pain with putting yourself on the line and getting into an intimate relationship and giving someone your all in a sense and if it doesn't work out or they believe you or perhaps even if they die and leave you without meaning to they can be terribly painful. I would have to say clearly in my experience and I think in the experience of my co-authors Dr. Lynne and Dr. meaning as painful as that can be it's much more painful to live the life that you're describing that your friend has in mind where in order to protect himself from that kind of pain he's going to remain isolated or alone which is a guarantee of suffering and pain whereas the other way is is merely a risk of pain. Well I'm really my main issue was about where our country is and what the offspring are the second ration from men and women and men

and war and I realize the sacrifices everybody put on the line and and the entourages. Snuff there now and then I'll forget about it. I think a lot of people worry about the weakening of relationship ties in our society and I think it's generally true that they are weakening that families are not as strongly together as they used to be that communities are not as bonded in some places in the country it's difficult to find communities at all you simply find people who are cohabiting in the same geographical region but there's no emotional connection or no community. I think a lot of people worry and they're right to worry that relationship ties appear to be weakening in some fundamental sense. Exactly why that's happening. I'm not sure although I think it's true that it is happening and that we all ought to be worried about it because it's going to have to let your IAS consequences not only for the for the happiness of people who

are relatively isolated who are you know good going to not be happy but also for the kind of the health of the nation from the national fabric of our society I think will be weakened as we see that happen. I'm not quite sure why it's happening and B it should be here what everybody thinks about it but I think it is happening. Well I appreciate the comment of the caller. We our time is slipping away here we just have about 10 12 minutes and two other callers so I hope you won't mind if I go on let's talk with someone next. Line two. Hello. Yeah. Two questions and you can shoot at either one or both or neither I guess. OK I was wondering if your you have any opinion as to what I'm thinking about here is places where marriages are arranged. Do you have any opinion about love before marriage or after. And that's question number one. There anything that would indicate one is better than the other. Then number two I was wondering you know if you are properly brought

up you know with and you've got you've been imprinted with a prop.. Well you know what I'm talking about. Given that you're a normal person why the limits of your ability to reach out love somebody. Like is there a can you see any kind of. Chemical reason as to why it be difficult for love of a race for example. Well those are actually those are both fascinating questions. I'm happy to tackle them and see what becomes of it in terms of the first question about arranged love. You know one of my co-authors Dr. meany actually grew up in Persia in Iran and at the time he grew up actually arranged marriages were pretty much the order of the day. And what he says is that in that society it was understood that people and entered into marriage for various

socially important reasons like to consolidate wealth for you. That is marriage serves a social purpose. But everybody understood that the emotional aspect of falling in love and romantic love would be satisfied outside of the marriage so that even though marriages were arranged adultery was quite common and that people would have love affairs with other people that they'd picked out. Even though the society dictated that who they were married to was a different person. That had been arranged for them. I think it's actually quite difficult to make love happen or make it flower by decree it just by putting two people together and saying Here you have to love one another. And that that most of the time that doesn't work out that that. That the people may share something that may be important but it is not necessarily. They are not easily the same kind of intense emotional bond that happens and people get to be attracted to who they're attracted to and going to pick out their own mate spontaneously. The second question in terms of if people are properly brought up and they can love well

what are the limits of their ability to reach out to other people and is there something that makes it difficult for them to love someone from another race. The most healthy kind of love properly speaking is mutual in the sense that that you would love somebody who loves you back if you know how to love well and that you would not be that interested in somebody who treats you badly. So in terms of the limits of your ability to reach out if the other person is treating him badly you may feel like reaching out for a little while but then pretty soon you'd be uninterested and turned off and you wouldn't feel like extending yourself and your attention would turn instead to someone who is willing to treat you well in terms of the racial question the that that actually addresses an issue that is older than love probably. Or a little bit older woman different than love which is that human beings are essentially tribal animals in like chimpanzees are in that way. They are very prone to

congregate in groups that they identify as this is and to identify another group as them and they're very inclined to dislike and attack and even sometimes hate the group that's identified as them and they're inclined to love the group that they identified as us. You see that common they say in the very vehement and even violent struggle that erupt around sporting teams. You know that the home team is us and the team from Dallas or the team from Los Angeles and them and we hate those players but we love our own players. That's one of the things that happens in race relations is that the innate tendency of people to identify a certain group of people as another group has them. And unfortunately in America it probably would work best if we all identified kind of the fundamental US level as like Americans that we could think of each other as Americans first and black people or white people or Asian people second. But that's that's quite difficult for people to do and they often don't Massah do that they succumb to the the more regional level of thinking where they think of people essentially like themselves I think. And that for many people it turns out to be people of

the same race. That's one of the reasons why racism and it's very difficult to eradicate. Let's go again to another caller this is painting a line through. Hello. Hello. I mean retired teacher of 38 years and I just wanted to involve our schools in this discussion of love because I had a very very important. And I just heard you mention me and them. We have a lot of groups like that. Happen in school I taught grade school most of my years. And I I just wonder sometimes if teachers are aware of how important their attitudes and their interests and their love is and to keep the Stalinists in the classroom and add to school so that everybody gets along and we do have an act. Well I guess I could call it a situation. You know I think I think you know a lot of

work. I think your point is a wonderful one actually. I think actually. I think teachers get an awfully short shrift in our society in a number of ways in terms of how we regard them. And it certainly is true that that something magical and loving can happen in a classroom where the teacher has the right kind of emotional attitude for the students and that they're tuned into the teacher and children naturally are there somewhat especially more than some of their highly disposed to orient towards influential adults in their immediate area. And to believe what the adult says and to take to heart the things that the adult says and does that probably that mechanism probably was originally designed for parents but teachers can certainly take advantage of it. I think it's hugely important emotional communication can occur between teachers and students when it's all going well and unfortunately of course in lots of classrooms United States that has kind of gone by the

wayside. I say yes and that you know I think part of it is class sizes are so much bigger it's and yes definitely the teachers a certain sum relate emotionally on that level. I think there is in some schools really just kind of an unfortunate emphasis on rote learning that they're disposed to cram the stuff in the kid's head to fast as you can. And I think the human dimension of teaching which in some ways can be the most influential in terms of motivating students to learn. It's sadly neglected and we probably all it. So I think it is. I just wanted to say a few years ago they had introduced a lot I would call a holistic learning which I believe covers the whole child the whole person for all of us. And that's gone by the wayside by all of this test stating that they have to do now. I think the idea of interest and it's gone by the wayside at least in our state.

And sadly so because I think children who are actively engaged with an adult who cares about them and they care about the adults those are the kids who are the most motivated and the most interested and I think spontaneously energized to learn. But see what's happened to our state I still help out at school at least in grade school is the teachers are so attuned to this testing they have to do every year. They don't have time to live. Absolutely. You know that's what I'm saying. And our schools are too big and I think all it's shooting in. Fighting and Stephanie carrying on but was back in some way to this lack of interests and empathy and love. I think that's that's definitely true and in fact I personally think it's clear that the school shootings that have erupted are principally due to alienation and the emotional frustration of not

not having something to belong to. In fact you know the website material of those kids who shot up the school in Columbine Colorado was really a poignant example of that if you read the material on their Web site. Those kids were plainly describing how agonizing it was for them to be alone and isolated and excluded and not feeling like they could belong to the school or belong to a coherent thing that was larger than themselves a group that would take them in. And it really was agonizing for them and at one point they snapped. Eventually because of that influence we're almost out of time and there just want to give you a chance to talk and unfortunately it may give you about a minute or two just a little bit more but one aspect of this I think is really interesting in that you touched on in the first half of the interview and that is the the the extent to which our health and well-being in a very literal sense does tend on having. Close loving relationships this this bond with the other person does indeed affect us in a physiological way

in a powerful way and I'm glad you brought that up because we haven't addressed it so much. It was basically what neuroscience has discovered is that people are fundamentally designed to require emotional contact with other people and that it tunes their physiology to function at an optimum level. And when people get that they're healthier in a variety of ways when they don't get that they fall ill in a variety of ways and it's there's an enormous amount of medical data now that tracks how very much more common. Heart disease cancer ulcers all kinds of illnesses aren't socially isolated people. And that even though we don't think about it relationships with other people are more influential on our physical health then the factors that we're used to thinking about like diet or exercise or the amount of cholesterol and so forth and that if we actually wanted to make ourselves healthy physically forget about emotionally but we just want to enhance physical health. The single best thing we can do for ourselves would be to make sure that we have close emotional ties to other

people. Well I certainly wish we could continue. There are more that we could do and there's more in the book but we'll just have to stop because we're at the end of the time for people who are interested in reading more on the subject I will suggest you look for the book that we've mentioned it's titled A general theory of love published by vintage paper. One of the three authors our guest this morning Thomas Lewis. He's a clinical professor assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at university California's San Francisco School of Medicine. Dr. Lewis thank you very much for being with us. It's been my pleasure.