Response to Question 2 From Final Reading of "General Theory..."

Overall when the book "A General Theory of Love" was released in 2000, it got a scattering of mostly positive reviews. It was received as a legitimate scientific work and was applauded for its studies in neural science and its dapplings in the world of humanistic psychology. It was also positively marked for its varied methods of studying psychology from Freud’s psychdynamic theory to modern psychological and medical studies in the world of biological neuroscience. It was reviewed as a work which connected the brain and love in a manner which was understandable and informative. Also, it’s efforts in linking the limbic brain to most acts of love and maintaining that stance throughout the book, constantly referring back to the influence of the limbic brain on whatever topic is at hand, is a consistency throughout the book. Although it was slightly criticized for being a work of "common sense", it was also recognized as stating the obvious which is often overlooked by most of the psychological world. The book was also criticized for not necessarily coming to any new conclusions or bringing about any new data or findings. "A General Theory of Love" simply states the theories and conceptualizations that already exist in these fields of psychology and brings them together into one book that makes these ideas known to the public.

Personally, as an individual who takes a great interest in the field of psychology and the like, I found this book to be extremely interesting. As I read it, it was not mundane as if I were reading a text book, however, it was interesting and many of the concepts in it were familiar to me as I went along. I think that Lewis, Amini, and Lannon did a wonderful job of conveying the psychological nature of love and related concepts to people who may not be very well experienced in the fields of psychology and or neural science. I became interested in the book very quickly and enjoyed how they connected everything back to the previously stated concepts of the limbic brain and related theories. The one criticism that I have with this book is that I do not think that they did enough to separate the factual and data-related information from that which was purely based on feelings, initial reactions, and emotions. Although I do think that both of these aspects are needed to convey the ideas that were presented in this book, I do believe that they could have been better distinguished from each other so as not to confuse the reader. Overall, I thought that this was a well-written and well-organized book that successfully uses the concepts that we know of today to answer the questions that we all have about the always impending idea of love.