“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed” (Jung, 1965). This quote accurately sums up the biological/neurobiological aspect pertaining to love. It is from this quote that we may deduce that when love is reciprocal, it is due to the chemical balance of both individuals. However, the biological aspect of love focuses on one individual and their physiological reactions when love is experienced. According to Chapman (2011), “in order to understand the brain’s response to love, one must examine the brain and fully comprehend the myriad array of structures involved. One of the main structures involved with falling in love is the limbic system. The particular …show more content…
This neurotransmitter which also acts as a hormone is released from the adrenal medulla during the ‘fight-or-flight’ response (Chapman, 2011). Other neurotransmitters that comes into play at this point include dopamine, norepinephrine, and oxytocin. Diane Ackerman’s book, A Natural History of Love, eloquently communicates the crucial role that the hormone oxytocin has over one’s experience of love (Ackerman, 1994). This is the hormone that encourages lovers to cuddle and thus results in lovemaking. When oxytocin is released during touching, kissing and/or having sexual intercourse, the above mentioned neurotransmitters and hormones are also released simultaneously resulting in the individual identifying with feelings of love (Ackerman, p.163). This could explain why other persons may feel attached to someone whose personality is not compatible to theirs. These neurotransmitters and hormones confuse the brain into thinking couples are a compatible match and it can thus be argued that sexual intercourse is one of the reasons why people stay in toxic …show more content…
This change can be witnessed in a study done by Fisher, Brown, Aron, Strong, & Mashek, (2010), where functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) were conducted among couples. ‘Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, is a technique for measuring brain activity. It works by detecting the changes in blood oxygenation and flow that occur in response to neural activity – when a brain area is more active it consumes more oxygen and to meet this increased demand blood flow increases to the active area’ (Psychcentral.com, 2016). During the study, romantic partners who identified as ‘intensely in love’ were enlisted. As they were glancing at an image of their darling, their brains were skimmed through by an fMRI. Fisher et. al (2010) observed a glow in numerous areas of the sweethearts’ brain, this represented blood flow. It is therefore evident that the feeling of love has certain regions that it dominates in the brain, and is also ignited by a cluster of hormones and
A History of Marriage by Stephanie Coontz speaks of the recent idealization of marriage based solely on love. Coontz doesn’t defame love, but touches on the many profound aspects that have created and bonded marriages through time. While love is still a large aspect Coontz wants us to see that a marriage needs more solid and less fickle aspects than just love.
The article '' love: the right chemistry'' by Anastasia Toufexis efforts to explain the concept of love from a scientific aspect in which an amateur will understand. Briefly this essay explains and describe in a scientific way how people's stimulation of the body works when you're falling in love. The new scientific researches have given the answer through human physiology how genes behave when your feelings for example get swept away. The justification for this is explained by how the brain gets flooded by chemicals. The author expresses in one point that love isn't just a nonsense behavior nor a feeling that exhibits similar properties as of a narcotic drug. This is brought about by an organized chemical chain who controls different depending on the individual. A simple action such as a deep look into someone's eyes can start the simulation in the body that an increased production of hand sweat will start. The tingly feeling inside your body is a result of a scientific delineation which makes the concept of love more concretely and more factually mainly for researchers and the wide...
The Progress of Love by Alice Munro Plot: Woman gets a call at work from her father, telling her that her mother is dead. Father never got used to living alone and went into retirement home. Mother is described as very religious, Anglican, who had been saved at the age of 14. Father was also religious and had waited for the mother since he first met her. They did not have sex until marriage and the father was mildly disappointed that the mother did not have money.
Pure Love in Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood, through a series of different situations, depicts the lives of typical people facing various obstacles in her short story “Happy Endings”. Despite their individual differences, the stories of each of the characters ultimately end in the same way. In her writing she clearly makes a point of commenting on how everybody dies in the same manner, regardless of their life experiences. Behind the obvious meaning of these seemingly pointless stories lies a deeper and more profound meaning. Love plays a central role in each story, and thus it seems that love is the ultimate goal in life.
In short story “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” written by Junot Diaz, we observe infidelity and the negative effects it has on relationships. Anyone who cheats will eventually get caught and will have to deal with the consequences. People tend to overlook the fact that most relationships are unlikely to survive after infidelity. Trust becomes an issue after someone has been unfaithful. Yunior, the main character in this story, encounters conflict as he struggles to move on with his life after his fiancée discovers that he has been unfaithful. Over a six-year period, the author reveals how his unfaithfulness has an effect on his health and his relationships.
Sian Beilock is the author of this novel, the information written by her would be considered credible due to the fact that she is a leading expert on brain science in the psychology department at the University of Chicago. This book was also published in the year 2015 which assures readers that the information it contains is up to date and accurate. The novel is easy to understand and the author uses examples of scientific discoveries to help make the arguments more relatable. Beilock goes into depth about how love, is something more than just an emotion, it derives from the body’s anticipation. “Volunteers reported feeling
Yes, even a simple sentence such as "I love you" has to be encoded in a specific neurochemical process to exert its effect on the person who gets to hear it. Much of the control mechanism for our emotions rests with neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that act at the points where nerve cells connect with each other. The prevalence, or the presence or absence of specific amounts of neurotransmitters, as well as the density of receptor sites for specific neurotransmitters at nerve endings, will control to a wide extend the emotions to which we are subject (6).
The phenomenon of love is such that when two souls first fall into love, their passions and
In Karen Horney's "The Distrust Between the Sexes," she attempts to explain the problems in the relationships between men and women. She writes that to understand the problem you must first understand that problems stem from a common background. A large amount of suspiciousness is due to people's intensity of emotions.
...lanced system. There is a great overlap in the psychology of drug addiction and human love that share the same levels of process when it comes to addiction (Fisher et al. 2010). Understanding these processes may help with future treatments when it comes to addiction in many different aspects of addiction (Fisher et al. 2010). In the article "The Behavioral, Anatomical and Pharmacological Parallels between Social Attachment, love and addiction", they state how "treatments used in one domain may be effective in the other; for instance, treatments used to reduce drug cravings may be effective in treating grief from loss of a loved one or a bad breakup" (Fisher et al. pg58, 2010 ). Over all, knowing that pair-bonding and drugs of abuse have such a strong correlation shows how intense human love really is. It is crazy to think we may be addicted to the ones we love.
For my honors assignment, I chose the TED talk “The secret to desire in a long-term relationship” by couple’s therapist Esther Perel. As I read down the list through my options for the assignment write up, this one caught my attention right away. I feel as though this article specifically lured me in because I could relate to it the most, taking that I have been in a long-term relationship for seven years. I felt that choosing to write about this TED talk would be beneficial to me in hearing what Esther Perel had to say on the topic that may affect someone just like me, and to also connect to all that we have learned in FSHD 237 this semester.
By choosing to lover her child, the mother acknowledges that she doesn’t feel as if she is obligated to do so because she wants to love him or her and is prepared for the challenges that await her. Thoma Oord writes in his article “The Love Racket: Defining Love and Agape for the Love–and–Science Research Program” that the definition of love refers to the “promotion of well being of all others in an enduring, intense, effective, and pure manner” meaning that when a person loves someone, they will try to do whatever they can to their beloved’s benefit (922). The child is benefited in many ways when the mother chooses to love him or her, for example, the child’s anxiety levels and sense of fear are lowered because they have the security of the bond they possess with their mother (Tarlaci 745). In his article, “Unmasking the Neurology of Love,” Robert Weiss explains that love is a “goal-orientated motivation state rather than a specific emotion” which arises the possibility of a mother “falling out of love” with her child if neither feelings or goals are present. Tarlaci observed an experiment conducted by A. Bartels and S. Zeki in which they compared the brain activity of both a mother looking at a picture of her child to a lover looking at a picture of their beloved. In the experiment it was discovered that “just about the same regions of the brain showed activity in the same two groups except for one” the PACG, which has been confirmed to be “specific to a mother’s love” (Tarlaci 747). So the chances of a mother falling out of love with her child are there, but are different from that of a lover due to the areas of the brain involved. Therefore, explaining the bond between a mother and child as something that forms when a mother chooses to love him or her implies a greater sense of willingness and
The purpose of the article “Navigating Love and Autism” by Amy Harmon is to emphasize that autistic people can achieve love, even though the struggles of autism are present. In this article, Jack and Kirsten both have autism and are working to build a dating relationship. For Kirsten and Jack, being comfortable is a huge aspect in their relationship. After their first night together,
Love is ubiquitous and universal, and we have all encountered and relished in the power of love. Many people associate the meaning of love with feelings of strong affection and personal attachment. While this is very accurate, there are several different aspects of love that we neglect to acknowledge. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson steps up and takes up this challenge in convergence with the magic of science. In doing so, she concludes that the things in which our brain thinks love is, are actually just the products of love. Love itself is something much greater and it is worth figuring out what this supreme emotion is all about. Fredrickson’s work primarily centered around the broaden-and-build theory, in which states “positive emotions
Boston: Bedford/St. Martins,. 349. The. “Psychological Theories About the Dynamics of Love (I).” 01 Mar. 2005 http://psychology.about.com/library/weekly/aa022000a.htm Richmond, Raymond Lloyd.