A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

Chapter VI Human Nature

uring Ruths year in New Guinea, she had written regularly to Peter. Her letters served as a kind of diary in which she recorded the days eventsomitting only anything about Xavier. She wanted to tell him about the joy she was experiencing, so she pretended it was the joy of confirmation of her theory of the use of motherese by people in various cultures. She didnt talk about Love Two in her letters, except to suggest that Peter take a look at Brownes book because it might have some relevance to his professional work. That little hint from a great distance was only partly taken. Peter read the book; he didnt understand it, believe it, or like it. In June of Ruths fourth year at Westport University, the semester had ended, and Ruth and Carol sat on stools in Carols lab. Ruth had told Carol about her year in New Guinea, and about Love Two. From her vantage in the field of evolutionary anthropology, Ruths displeasure with the lack of progress in psychology had deepened. She tried to explain her dissatisfaction to Carol. Not only from Brownes book, but from anthropological studies, and from my own personal experience, I know that there is something that is important that is not being dealt with. Do you know the reason? Carol asked. I think it is very basic, intrinsic to the traditions of academia. Surely you recall from your psychology courses that psychology research terms are used as stimuli, that is, words are presented the same way to all volunteer subjects whose reactions to them are then statistically or otherwise analyzed. The implication being what? Carol asked. The problem is that the word is not really the stimulus. The subject is actually responding to the definition of the term, the meaning that that term has for the person who hears or reads it. This is clear when dealing with people who speak different languages, but it is usually forgotten otherwise. Browne, on the other hand, maintained that the major difficulty with interpreting the results of such verbal experiments might be traceable to this problem. I see what you mean, but isnt the solution to observe action instead of relying on things people say? Carol wondered. Thats been the standard suggestion. It became a whole movement, called behaviorism, during much of the 20th century, and I admit it has a lot going for it. But the problem is bigger than that. Think of what Browne did. In his first study of romantic love, he presented volunteer psychology students with several hundred index cards on which were written statements about love. The students read the statements and placed the cards that expressed their own feelings in one pile, those that did not express their feelings in another pile. Because of the frequency with which cards expressing strong negative feelings, e.g., When we broke up I felt depressed, he concluded that being in love was important. Well, from what youve told me, you agree that it is important. Oh yes, its very important, and from that first study, Browne concluded that it was even more important than his own previous personal experiences had led him to believe. But, Ruth continued, that was all he found out. From those data he learned nothing else. He wasnt a bit closer to his real question, the question he hardly knew how to frame. You mean the question of what love is, Carol contributed. Thats right. The fact that many students put such cards as I have been very depressed over a love affair or When she rejected me I wanted to commit suicide into the pile supposedly descriptive of their own experiences clearly meant that there was a big issue there, and the statistics on suicide by college students supported the idea that they werent just talking. But those data did not tell him what being in love meant. It could be agonizing, but what was it? Many students also selected cards that said, I would not want

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

to live without love and Love is the most important and most beautiful thing in life. In fact, Browne knew so little after that first survey, that he could only conclude that if he were to study romantic love his methods had to change. I can understand that. All he found was confirmation of what was said in popular songs. But couldnt he also find sex differences, and other comparisons? Carol wondered. Endlessly, but he didnt bother because he had sense enough to see that those differences would probably only reflect cultural attitudes, like the kind of attitudes I had about the subject when Xavier first began to talk about it. Thats the trouble with psychology. It is fixated on individual and group differences, not on real understanding. Correlations. Yes correlations. Statistical analyses. Finding out what goes with what, or, rather, who does or says what, where who is just another superficial measure. Take Buss writings in evolutionary psychology, for example. He finds similar answers to his questionnaires in his famous 37 cultures, and thats okay, as far as it goes, but his findings are only a dim reflection of what is really going on in mate selection. Browne began to get somewhere only when he gave up on questionnaires and used open-ended interviews in which his informants were simply asked to more or less tell whatever were their thoughts, opinions, and experiences on the subject of romantic love or being in love, Ruth said. Frankly, its hard to imagine anything less scientific, Carol noted. Thats what everyone would think, and thats why he never tried to publish his findings in the psychology journals. Carol asked, So where did that leave him? It left him with the understanding that caused him to formulate his theory of Love Two, thats where! You see, by excluding self-report data, psychologists threw out the baby and were left swimming around in the murky bath water. The baby, I take it, being the experience, Carol offered. When Browne shifted to interviews, he found that being in love meant different things to different people, but he also found that there was a distinct pattern of subjective experience that was reported again and again, but not always. Thats why he concluded the state of Love Two is something that one is either in or not in. I am unfamiliar with Love Two, Carol said, that is, I have never experienced it, but, yes, if I had been interviewed I would probably have said that I had been in love. I might have added, with the merest hint of arrogant pride, that my type was not neurotically obsessive. Just then, they were interrupted by an emergency. Bells clanged, the footsteps of a multitude clattered through the hall. The PA system announced that everyone was to leave the building immediately. It was a bomb threat, the third that year. Eventually the culprit was discovered. It was Robert Bentle, one of the students Ruth had interviewed. The affair consumed everyones attention for weeks. Ruth was called on by the police to provide what information she could, as she was one of the few instructors who had had more than superficial contact with him. Unfortunately, she had little to offer that was any use, as the boy had, unlike most of the other students, not been very forthcoming about his personal feelings, and had only volunteered to gain points on his records. All psychology and anthropology majors were required to participate in their choice of several research projects. Bentle had selected Ruths project as one he thought would be easy. He had heard that it would be up to him how much time it would take. The interview was Ruths shortest. Whether Love Two had anything to do with his criminality was something no one would ever find out, for he was killed by the police when he tried to escape. When things on campus finally calmed down, Carol and Ruth returned to the subject of Love Two. Carol confessed that the whole thing had left her puzzled. How, she wondered, could something so important be unstudied.

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

Ruth tried to explain. All right. Imagine the social pressures that would exist in a situation in which the topic of Love Two came up, Ruth said. Think of a meeting publishers considering publishing Brownes book, or, better yet, a committee set up to determine whether research on Love Two should be funded. And imagine that the group consists of six people: one chronically afflicted, one having experienced a painful Love Two in the past, two who have never experienced it, and one whose Love Two was quickly diminished by total reciprocation, so it existed, but never long-lived or painful. Finally, one person who knew the experience only second hand, particularly from the vantage of an unreciprocating object. I see what you mean, Ruth. With only self-report as evidence, it would be hard to convince those who had not experienced it that it actually existed. When it is described, but not experienced directly, it sounds like mental illness. Who would be silly enough to stand up before that crowd and maintain that it exists because they have had it. Theyd be laughed at. It would be public display of ones dirty laundry. Ruth continued. In the preface to the second edition of his book, Browne writes of a short article about Love Two that appeared in one of those tabloids you see at the supermarket check-out line. It was a 750-word article. In it, Love Two was described except that it wasnt called Love Two. It was called love madness. Brownes email address was given in the article for anyone who wanted to tell about their own experiences. He received hundreds of messages whose content was indistinguishable from the sorts of letters he had received from people who had read his whole book! Brownes interpretation was that Love Two is a common, well-known, and frequently experienced phenomenon. Carol said, Im beginning to get the point. Love Two is so crazy, so antithetical to what sober people can talk about, no less admit to, at a three-piece suited, serious, public meeting, that it remains in the shadows. Its something that a person wouldnt want to admit to in public. It is a madness, compared with what we normally think of as normal. Yes, Ruth added. Some of the people who wrote to Browne thanked him for convincing them that they were not crazy. They had thought they were. Which is why we have not tried to discuss our ideas about Love Two at a faculty meeting. Its why you have not tried to publish the results of your interview research and why Browne also steered clear of professional journals. And its more than that, Carol; it runs even deeper. According to Browne, and according to the results of my research, Love Two is involuntary. For several years now I have been including a discussion of Brownes theory in my introductory lecture to cultural anthropology. After one of them, I found a note in my mailbox. The anonymous student wrote that if romantic love is Love Two, and Love Two is an involuntary, basically biological, phenomenon, then romance and individuality are compromised. Furthermore, the note read, and I quote, Involuntariness means no free will; no free will about something so important means there can be no sin, no sin means no morality, no morality strips meaning from life and leads to social chaos. In other words, Carol said, to accept Love Two for what it obviously is an instinct that takes over ones thinking and feeling, something beyond the will is unacceptable. It evokes a fear of scientific knowledge, a fear of being only a thing, an entity without a soul, an amoral, mechanical process without a God to guide one or and an afterlife to look forward to. In other words, Ruth agreed, it means doing violence to everything people hold sacred. Up to this point, Ruth had referred only vaguely to her own Love Two experience with Xavier in New Guinea. Now she provided details. After that, they spent many an afternoon analyzing the methods and customs of the social sciences. Although most psychologists had ignored it, there were some who actually opposed Brownes Love Two theory, calling it simplistic and not in conformity with scientific observation. They said that Brownes conclusions were too radical, poorly documented, untestable, and subjective, being entirely based on self-report, which was well-known to be unreliable, too prone to the devastating effect of bias and distortion to be taken seriously.

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

Maybe, if it had not been for my own experience, I would have felt the same way, Ruth suggested. And maybe, Carol said, if you had not told me about Xavier and your year in New Guinea, and if we had not been friends and colleagues who saw eye to eye on so many other matters, I would have found Brownes ideas unconvincing. Incidentally, Carol, theres one thing I havent yet told you about, and I dont think it really matters very much, but anything is worth a try. The package Xavier left for me as his parting gift contained these. Ruth reached into her briefcase and produced seven small containers, some in glass, some in animal skin. Xavier left me these vials of what the witch doctors of seven tribes had given him. What are they? Carol asked. They are seven love potions from seven different tribes. That was your lovers parting love gift? It was, Ruth answered. I think he meant is only as a symbol, but I have kept them, mainly for sentimental reasons. Do you think there is any possibility that they might have some biochemical value? Carol examined them and read the list of ingredients Xavier had attached to each. I dont believe its possible. Neither do I, really, and Im sure Xavier didnt. But youre the biochemist, so it seems worth looking into. Anyway, here they are. Carol read, Snake venom, rat gut, and ground spider legs! Ugh! I know. They are disgusting, but in his note Xavier said that that theyre ancient and much believed in by the respective tribes. What I am wondering is whether, at the chemical level, there might be something that supports the strong belief that the tribes have in them. Could you check them out? I guess so, Carol conceded, and anything is worth a try. Okay, Ill do the analysis, Carol said, but I dont have much hope. They left it there. Carol put the vials on a shelf in the lab and promptly forgot them in the press of other problems.

uth also talked with Carol about Peter. One day, after feeling annoyed with Peter over something minor, which happened at a time that she was reading a book about the business of psychotherapy, Ruth wrote a letter, which she showed to Carol:

Dear Peter, Although you are a generous man and basically honest, you belong to a dishonest profession. You deny it to yourself because it has brought status and financial return. That is why you left science. You have achieved your goals by being a good guy with a perfect record. Maybe you didnt realize it, but you trampled on those women patients who fell in love with your intelligence and with the beauty and perfection of your habits and standards. I mean those caught in the grip of Love Two, which you still called transference. But I do admit that you were consistent. The face you showed to them was the same one you showed to me,

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

to Arthur, to your other patients, and to your colleagues. Indeed, it was the face you showed to the world, and surely to the man in the mirror as well. It was the face of a perfectly good man in all respects and to the very outreaches of your personality. And yet, Peter, iniquity lurked in your conscientious and innocent intransigence, and in your refusal to deviate a whit from what you saw as the procedures dictated or condoned by your profession. Those patients suffered as the result of your exploitation of them. No, you never blackened your record by taking them to bed. You didnt need sex; you had adulation. And our domestic life was uninterrupted. You never worked late at the office, and never went on long business trips unless I went along. You supported me in my career. In the early days you took out the garbage and changed Arthurs diapers. You were as perfect in our marriage as you were in your clinical work. You were thoroughly dependable; you never stepped out of line. I am grateful to you for the stability of our life, but I cant respect your acceptance of the narrow conceptions of your profession, the ones you seem incapable of looking beyond.
How did Peter respond? Carol wondered. This is a copy. I destroyed the letter without letting Peter see it, but it describes how I feel about him. It was what I would have said to Peter, had I been honest. But honesty is not always the best policy, not when it hurts as that would have hurt our relationship. It was all there under the surface in ways I couldnt always hide, but there are some things that cant be said, that shouldnt be said. In the end, she wouldnt have to say them. Others would do it for her. Before the trial and its aftermath, he would not have understood. Later, when he would have understood, there was no need for it to come from his wife. It would only have been pouring salt on raw wounds. But Carol was puzzled. I dont understand how you could live with someone about whom you feel that way. I dont mean to be critical of you. I just mean that I dont understand it. Sometimes I dont understand it myself. Its as if there are two of me and two of Peter. Those other halves of us get on very well. And then there was Arthur. The child that binds. I guess mostly, it was the habit of the life we had made together. The daily pattern that worked, in its way. To succeed, private practitioners in any field must be good politicians. Peter was an asset to cocktail parties, fun to be around. He was elected to an office of any group he ever joined. Yes, Carol said. I know what you mean. Although I have seen little of him, I couldnt help but find him appealing. He has a way of making a person feel that he cares. I remember the time I left my umbrella, and he rushed out to give it back to me. Yes, my husband notices little things. I can well understand that he makes his patients feel good about themselves. Hes been good to me and very good to Arthur. He really does care. Would you say that Peter has a therapeutic personality? Carol asked.

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

Yes, I really think he transcends the imperfections of his profession. It wasnt hard for me to assume that we were fond enough of each other to sustain our marriage through old age. Although I know that he loves me, Peters loyalty is ideological as well; he is intent on being perfect in every way. He would never leave me, not even if he wanted to. It would be a blot on his perfect history. It would mar his selfimage as well as the image he projects to the world. Still, the more I learned about romantic love combined with the more I learned about the philosophy behind Peters brand of psychotherapy, the more difficult it became to talk to him about his work. He wont hear what he does not want to know; most particularly, he doesnt want to hear that Love Two is untreatable by his methods and that it is not as Freud conceived it, but a biological adaptation that serves an evolutionary purpose, a powerful and involuntary sexual reaction. After that one conversation, Ruth and Carol seldom talked about Peter any more, not even during the trial. There was little more to say. For Ruth, life at home centered on Arthur and seldom involved discussion of problematic topics. She continued her work on motherese and, after a while, even she and Carol seldom discussed Love Two. Then something happened to bring the topic back into sharp focus. Brent Huxley, President of the University, became involved in a tragic scandal. That he had had an affair with Bernice Beckstrom, one of Ruths graduate students, became known when Bernice had a baby and claimed that President Huxley was the father. The year before, she had attended one of Ruths lectures on the Browne theory of the universality of Love Two. Bernice knocked at Ruths office door after the lecture. Although Ruth suspected that something was troubling the girl, Bernice merely asked a few obvious questions. She wondered whether there had been any follow-up research to Brownes work. Ruth referred her to an interview that Browne had given to a reporter, Dick Price, for a magazine, and that was that. Later, when the scandal broke, Ruth remembered Bernice and her interest in Love Two. It brought the topic back into Carol and Ruths joint attention. There was also the Monica LewinskyPresident Clinton business. It was easy to forget about Love Two after my own recovery from Xavier, Ruth told Carol, but the subject is serious. It deserves attention that it hasnt received. I agree, Carol said. Do you remember the love potion vials you gave me that I promised to look into? I assumed you hadnt had time to do anything about them. Besides, you said you thought analyzing them wouldnt be easy. It wont be easy, but Ive decided to try. From all I can see, I have been fortunate never to have experienced it, myself; but between your story, Brownes book, and now this scandal with the Beckstrom girl, well, yesterday I took them down off the high shelf I had put them on, and began the process of analysis. Im glad. Im not hopeful, but it is a serious matter for many people. I know that some of Peters patents have been afflicted, and that he doesnt understand. On the other hand, Browne reported in his interview with Price that some psychiatrists have actually given the book to patients as a kind of therapy adjunct. But thats not Peters way. They decided to renew their serious, but off-the-cuff, effort to understand romantic love scientifically. While Carol worked with the vials, Ruth conducted another series of interviews. She wanted to understand why Alan Brownes message went unheard for so long. That some had heard and acted on it, like the psychiatrist who gave Brownes book to his lovesick patients, only increased the mystery. About the time that Ruth and Carol returned their attention to Love Two, Ruth told Carol about the last open discussion she had had with Peter on the subject of psychology. It had taken place just before Arthur was born. It was about the word may. Ruth had noticed that it was frequently used writings by psychologists.

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

I said, If may, is true, then isnt may not logically implied as a possibility? And if something may or may not be true, then, without guidelines, has anything really been said? It seems to me that to say that cigarettes may cause cancer opens the door to cigarettes also not causing cancer. You were baiting him, Carol noted. I know, and I was sorry. It led to one of our very few arguments. Thereafter, of course, the professional distance between us was, by mutual consent, no longer discussed. Ironically, from the first, even before we were married, the differences in our approaches had been most obvious on the subject of romantic love. Peter did not agree with Browne. He was firm about it. He said, You cant turn a pathology into normality by decree. The people who supplied Browne with testimony were copying the folklore and romantic literature. When lovesickness occurs, there was always a neurotic base that blew it up to the extremes described. So there it was and there it has remained.