Knowing someone is the first goal of therapy. Modulating emotionality - whether by relatedness or psychopharmacology or both - is second. Therapy's l… - Thomas Lewis

If the attachment fabric of a civilization frays, if people cannot get from their relationships the emotional regulation that those bonds were designed to furnish, they will commandeer whatever means of limbic modulation they can lay hands on. Their hungering brains will seek satisfaction from a variety of ineffectual substitutes — alcohol, heroin, cocaine, and their cousins.

Fathers and teachers,” wrote Dostoyevsky, “I ponder the question, ‘What is Hell?’ I maintain it is the suffering of being unable to love.

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