It took Dr. Helen Fisher a lot of time to write her book Why We Love. She traveled to different places and conducted a lot of research. This was to assist her in coming up with a viable conclusion. In her hypothesis, she had a lot of questions that would assist her with the completion of her study. Fisher wanted to know why people love each other, why a person chooses someone over another, and whether true love exists at first sight. She also wanted to know how this love evolves. To answer these questions, she had to travel around the world in order to interact with different races and get their views on her topic. Her book research included even a brain study of people claiming to be madly in love. In her work, she uses words that make love sound exciting and magnificent. Her inclusion of subtopics in chapters within the book gives the book quite a good flow.
Fisher does excellent work by helping people to understand the relationship between science and human interaction. She does her research and explains her work in a manner that is easy to understand. She is dynamic and creative, especially when explaining the brain chemistry that deals with love. Hence, she is a pronounced source of encouragement to individuals who have despaired in love and those who have faced heartbreaks. In her book, Fisher explains the fooling aspect of the neurological paths in the brain. Her work further explains the attachment that exists in love. This is one of the noticeable weaknesses in the book: giving a concept and at the same time showing how it fools around. This obviously reduces the trust or credibility of Fisher’s work in the readers’ opinion. Most people think of having chemistry bonds with a lover as one of the sources of romance. The scientific inclinations behind most relationships are emotional yearning and lustful compulsions which form the roots. In this book, the author provides a comprehensive analysis that demystifies why we love and why people experience lust.
Her book, however, lacks content. In chapter one, she has borrowed significantly from other ancient prominent writers. This makes her book lack the quality and originality of content. Besides, Fisher quotes too much within the book. Her book is quite thin, with a lot of quotes and filler text. Some quotes from her book can be dated back to as far as five hundred years. The question that arises is whether the love life of the old days is exactly the same as today. This is something that people have experienced throughout different ages, hence the topic pertains to writers who hope to use the ideas of other people to write their own works. This is evident in Fisher’s case, as she borrows a lot from Woody Allen and ancient Sumeria. Any reader who might have passed through the books by the former writer or those who have read the original work would have little interest in her work. The book would have been half the size if it had been her original work. The interesting part of the book is the writers and thinkers she decides to quote. Fisher’s writing novelty is limited in that she merely converts many creative expressions into an informative narration.
In chapter two, the author uses an animal model to explain the concept of love and sex. A question arises on why the writers should explore the topic of love through the lens of the animal-model. This leads to misunderstanding of human sexuality. Such writers express it in a way that will make people believe that they are not responsible for what happens to them sexually. This is perhaps due to the out-of-control feeling when it comes to sex. People feel more comfortable believing that their ‘animal nature’ controls their sexual response. Fisher believes that romantic love is as a result of sex. This is contrary to most readers’ view of this. Most people believe that sex comes after true love under normal circumstances. Arguing that love of affection is a by-product of sex assists in justifying that studying animal sexual behavior would provide insights on human sexual behavior. This thought is contrary to the real happenings and will just mislead the readers on the issue of true love and sex.
Fisher’s book also creates the notion that we do not realize what we do when we create pair-bonds. Fisher claims that it is biology that controls us. When people come together through romantic love, they do not consider that these are natural forces that are controlling them the same way animals connect and stay together. Everyone wants to think he or she is in full control of the things that they are doing and perceive themselves as responsible for their every action.
In chapter four, the author assumes that lust is a natural event. She again cites one animal study to explain various aspects of human sexuality. Sometimes lust may lead to romantic love. It has been evident of people who started it off with sex developing signs of romantic love. The author tries to explain complex human patterns of relationship and choices through the use of the brain chemical. Human behaviors can be easily understood by their choice rather than by their chemistry. Their choices are conditional and rely on social factors.
In chapter five, Helen Fisher argues it out that men sell themselves to women through their power and wealth while women sell themselves by their beauty (Fisher, 2004). She assumes that all people are out there trying to reproduce. This would imply selecting a mate by their potential to reproduce. This is contrary since people can choose their mates for individual reasons. When people fall in love, they do not think about reproduction. Reproduction is something that comes in later.
In chapter six, Helen Fisher discusses how people demonstrate unique capabilities that are not present in other animals. She refers to the human brain as more developed. The main capacity that is evident in this case is the ability to speak. It seems she goes wrong here because people started mating long ago even before they could speak. Our ancestors who lived millions of years could mate and reproduce. Overall, the hypothesis that Fisher uses is not clear to the readers. The main reason why people were mating long time ago was for sexual reasons with nothing much about the modern romantic feeling. The human developed brain allows them to have complex ideas pertaining sex. The ancestors might have experienced sexual interactions without romantic love. This is because the human culture can be dated to a time earlier than the emergence of romance.
In chapter eight of her book, Fisher writes about the biological chemicals and evolutionary biology. She uses these two concepts to explain romantic love and mating strategies. She accomplishes this by using famous passages, myths, and poems to make her point on the analytical angle of the evolutionary biology. The problem with the book is that she sees everything through this lens of evolutionary psychology. The author does not include any other brain studies in her book except for her own in describing the neurology of loving. The book is all about her study. If she could have included more studies, readers could have greater trust in her work rather than view it as her opinion.
There are many general opinions and thoughts when Fisher suggests that people’s psychological make-up has a direct link to the ancestors. This is contrary to many readers’ expectations, since her current study would better be independent of the ancestors. She describes her brain study involving a number of people, and that adds to her evidence in the work. It appears that the inclusion of the ancestors just messes things up. This is because their case is just imaginary, as she actually conducts no valid study on them. Her conclusion, it seems, has no concrete base. For example, discussing why people chose some over others, she suggests that women chose taller men so as to get protection. In reality, capability to protect others does not necessarily come with height.
Women do not need physical protection alone. They need financial and emotional protection, which are not associated with height of their men. It happens that Fisher leaves some of her points dangling. She leaves a lot of questions unanswered and goes further to explain them in her other books. For example Fisher starts to analyze how people can find true love through understanding of the type of personality they bear. This is a question that may readers would expect her to answer within this book rather than leave them in suspense by carrying it over to the next.
Helen Fisher, just like many other writers who have written about love, has not clearly distinguished between romantic and sexual responses. Another common distortion among anthropologists is the conflicting explanations of romantic feelings and family feelings. In the ancient times, people lived in groups. Whenever two or more people live closely, they develop deep feelings for one another especially for their kin, no matter the kinship system. Marriage, pair-bonding, kinship and other relationships have existed independent of romantic love. Every pair of people has a bond between them. The difference is that people tend to settle in a relationship with the person who is more crucial to them than all others.
The book fails to answer some of the questions that it poses. The author does not offer a clear understanding of the different cultures that she discusses as in the cases of Japan and Australia. She lightly discusses the statistical findings from her study. She uses no real diagram throughout her book, thus making it harder and harder to comprehend, and she creates doubt on the viability of her findings. The survey of the actual science that Fisher employs is captivating. Much of love has its root to biology. It is compelling and primitive. She also presents a lot of theories at first while the last few chapters of her work are the most powerful (Fisher, 2004). They are about various chemical sciences in detail concerning the process of losing love and how one can push out past the biology. This information enables readers to see love through a different lens.
In a nutshell, the topic is quite fascinating, but the book itself is not that much enlightening more so for those who have taken a psychology or anthropology course. The nod of romantic literature is good. Despite the quotes being beautiful, they seem to be haphazardly placed throughout the text.
Despite these shortcomings, the book is informative. The idea that mankind’s need to procreate is that basic motivator behind the mating drive seems logical, as well as the one that the genes are going to live on in children even when some dies. The view that that deep down in the humankind their sexual behavior is going to have some significant consequences seems interesting. In her entire work, Helen Fisher portrays love as a complicated issue that people deal with every day. This is true. Besides, Fisher seems right saying that it further becomes complicated once a lover who was once heartbroken is searching for another soul mate.