Heart's Castle

"A General Theory of Love" takes readers on a revelatory journey through the psychobiology of emotional life. The book begins by telling the story of the brain's three evolutionary stages: the reptile brain, the limbic brain, which we share with all mammals, and the advanced cognitive brain, unique to humans. The primordial limbic brain determines who we are and creates most of what makes human life worthwhile -- affection, creativity, music, religion, devotion, art, relationships, families, love. A "General Theory of Love" describes how the limbic brain gives mammals an innate and wordless communications link, and how it obliges mammals to obtain neural balance from an unexpected source -- each other. The limbic bond they share actually allows mammals to change the structure of each other's brains. The startling consequence: who we are and who we become depend, in part, on whom we love.

In the latter portions of the book, the reader will find these extraordinary insights applied to the issues he faces in daily life, as "A General Theory of Love" discusses how relationships function and where they go wrong, how parents shape a child's developing self, how psychotherapy really works, and how modern society regularly courts disaster by flouting limbic laws it does not yet recognize.

We spend our lives immersed in a world where unseen forces and silent messages shape our destinies and our lives. As individuals and as a society, our chance for happiness depends on our ability to decipher that hidden world. "A General Theory of Love" is the book that breaks the code and gives the reader the key to his own life. This book is an experience not to be missed.