Article October 13, 1986 Issue

Second Thought

Looking again at news and commentary

From The Boston Globe Magazine, February 9, 1986

"One of the problems with the way social scientists write about love is that they underplay its grounding, centering role in our lives. Often what experts end up writing about is not love but what gets in love's way. Psychologists write about love as infatuation or addiction, as obsession or jealousy. Or they write about the symptoms or tools of love and mistake a part for the whole.

"Love is a relational force with immense, global, physical, mental, and spiritual effects. My sister, a pediatric nurse and mother of four, began her nursing career by learning that when babies with the dire and downward-spiraling syndrome called 'failure to thrive' were admitted to the hospital, the recommended form of treatment was love. Their ailment, which could be fatal if left unattended, was insufficient love. Once they started to feel the love of their nurses, the babies started to gain weight, smile, explore the world—in a word, they started to live.

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