book reviews A General Theory of Love

hat is love, and why are some people unable to find it? What is loneliness, and why does it hurt?” are the opening words of this important book. These ancient human problems still haunt us, but what do they have to do with medical practice? In this highly readable book, three San Francisco psychiatrists suc-cessfully explain new discoveries, insights, and devel-opments in neurobiology during what has been called “The Decade of the Brain, ” and by using love as their focal point, they also help us to understand more about love. These three physicians provide welcome coun-terpoint to Alan Barbour’s observation that efforts to understand the patient as a person are most often rel-egated to psychiatry, a field which itself seems to have abdicated that goal.1 The authors show that an under