What’s Love Got to Do With It? …Everything. Review of Thomas Lewis MD’s A General Theory of Love (2001):

“Social change activists and psychodynamic psychotherapists often believe that

knowledge is power. Freud proclaimed “Where Id was, there shall Ego be,” confident

that rational insight would tame the irrational powers of our unconscious minds.

Activists work to “get their message out,” believing that if people correctly understood

the social inequities in the world, they would change them. Both the therapist and the

activist tend to think that those who see love as the key to change are “flaky,” full of

“New Age mush.” Imagine their surprise when they learn that neurobiological science

is now discovering that the primary problem in both mental illness and social

alienation lies precisely in our damaged ability to love, and that the cure to both lies in

enhancing that ability. Will those believers in scientific rationality, whether they be

liberal politicians and union activists or psychotherapists, embrace these

cutting-edge scientific findings?” –Michael Bader, Tikkun