In a dazzling vote of confidence for form over substance, our culture fawns over the fleetingness of being “in love” while discounting the importance… - Thomas Lewis

The mind-body clash has disguised the truth that psychotherapy is physiology. When a person starts therapy, he isn't beginning a pale conversation; he is stepping into a somatic state of relatedness.

Advances in communication technology foster a false fantasy of togetherness by transmitting the impression of contact- phone calls, faxes, e-mail- without its substance. And when a relationship is ailing from frank time deprivation, both parties often aver that nothing can be done. Every activity they spend time on (besides each other) has been classified as indispensable: cleaning the house, catching the news, balancing the checkbook.

Everything a person is and everything he knows resides in the tangled thicket of his intertwined neurons. These fateful, tiny bridges number in the quadrillions, but they spring from just two sources: DNA and daily life. The genetic code calls some synapses into being, while experience engenders and modifies others.