LOVE

20th c. – now

About 1945. A mother carries a child outside a wartime nursery. Later, a room where a child is left and comes back. Later, a scanner. The night is still a night.

What can a measurement know?

A room. A leaving. A return.

Attachment is watched in caregiving and separation. Mechanism is not meaning. Oxytocin is not the love chemical.

After the war, John Bowlby asked what happens to a child when the person who cares for them can disappear. Mary Ainsworth built a room to watch it. The mother is there. A stranger comes. The mother leaves. The mother comes back. They write down what the child does. That room is not the photograph. The photograph is Toni Frissell, about 1945, a woman carrying a child outside a wartime nursery. In 1987 Hazan and Shaver asked whether adult romance was the same pattern. They proposed it. They did not prove it. In 2005, people who said they were intensely in love lay in a scanner. Blood moved. A scan cannot sit the night, or bring food, or stay.

  1. 1950s–60sJohn Bowlby

    Attachment begins where care can be lost.

  2. 1960s–70sMary Ainsworth

    A room. A leaving. A return. She watched what the child did.

  3. 1987Hazan and Shaver

    An adult extension is proposed. Proposed is not proven identity.

Mary Ainsworth. A protocol.

  1. BeforeA roomCare is present.
  2. The testA leavingCare can be lost.
  3. AfterA returnShe watched what the child did.

We do not have the film.

Source

Aron, Fisher, and Brown. 2005.

Supports

People who said they were intensely in love went into a scanner. Blood moved.

Does not

Neural correlates of intense attraction. Not the meaning of love. A scan cannot sit the night, or bring food, or stay.

Source

Helen Fisher. 1990s on. A mapping, not a discovery of Love.

Three systems that can be told apart.

Lust

Attraction

Attachment

Does not

They do not add up to Love. Oxytocin is not the love chemical. Useful. Not the meaning.

No letter.A leaving. A return.Care without speech.

Sources

Helen Fisher's mapping of lust, attraction, and attachment is a useful dissociation of systems. It is not the science of love. Hazan and Shaver, 1987: an adult extension is proposed, not proven identity. Aron, Fisher, and Brown, 2005: neural correlates of intense attraction. Not the meaning of love.

  1. Frissell, Toni. “[Mother carrying child outside wartime nursery],” about 1945. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction number LC-USZC4-4336. Care and kinship. Not Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation.
  2. Bowlby, John. Attachment research, 1950s–60s. Caregiving and separation. Paraphrase of the research program, not a quotation.
  3. Ainsworth, Mary D. Salter. The Strange Situation. 1960s–70s. Paraphrase of the research program, not a quotation.
  4. Hazan, Cindy, and Phillip Shaver. “Romantic Love Conceptualized as an Attachment Process.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52, no. 3 (1987): 511–24. Adult extension proposed, not proven identity.
  5. Fisher, Helen. Anatomy of Love (1992); Why We Love (2004). Mapping of lust, attraction, and attachment as systems. Useful dissociation. Not “the science of love.” Paraphrase of the research program, not a quotation.
  6. Aron, Arthur, Helen Fisher, Debra J. Mashek, Greg Strong, Haifang Li, and Lucy L. Brown. “Reward, Motivation, and Emotion Systems Associated with Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love.” Journal of Neurophysiology 94, no. 1 (2005): 327–37. fMRI of intense attraction. Not the meaning of love.