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A review by lory_enterenchanted
Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered by Bruce D. Perry, Maia Szalavitz
This is such an important topic and the research is fascinating. I would like to see more rigor in the thinking and clarity of definition around the huge areas of "empathy" and "love." While the authors made a convincing case that humans need closeness and connection to grow healthy and lead stable, productive lives, there is also such a thing as unhealthy closeness (enmeshment) and real problems that result from it. The "codependency movement" is briefly criticized at the end of the book as aiming to push people towards independence at the expense of relationship, but I think really it's all about establishing healthy boundaries and a balance between self and other.
Anyway, there is no shortage of research to do in this field ,and I hope we'll be hearing much more about it. The main challenge we seem to face today is to expand the ways we evolved for surviving together in small, close-knit groups, into seeing ourselves as members of a global family, humanity as a whole. Many people are distressed by the hugeness of this and close themselves off in narrowly defined groups, going with the old way of feeling secure as "us" by battling a "them." Other forces are working strongly to splinter us even further, isolating and distancing us from one another and waling us off behind non-human, mechanical barriers. But the stories of healing in this book - and also the warning images of people damaged beyond repair - can inspire us to learn from the wisdom in the very structure of our brains and bodies, to recover the human bonds of love and caring that made us strong, and to evolve further into a species that uniquely is able to love out of freedom and knowledge, rather than merely by instinct.
Anyway, there is no shortage of research to do in this field ,and I hope we'll be hearing much more about it. The main challenge we seem to face today is to expand the ways we evolved for surviving together in small, close-knit groups, into seeing ourselves as members of a global family, humanity as a whole. Many people are distressed by the hugeness of this and close themselves off in narrowly defined groups, going with the old way of feeling secure as "us" by battling a "them." Other forces are working strongly to splinter us even further, isolating and distancing us from one another and waling us off behind non-human, mechanical barriers. But the stories of healing in this book - and also the warning images of people damaged beyond repair - can inspire us to learn from the wisdom in the very structure of our brains and bodies, to recover the human bonds of love and caring that made us strong, and to evolve further into a species that uniquely is able to love out of freedom and knowledge, rather than merely by instinct.