Why Love Matters
For anyone interested in
really solving the problems of poverty and injustice, Why Love Matters: How
affection shapes a baby's brain, by Sue Gerhardt is essential reading for all
parents teachers and politicians.
Sue Gerhardt explores how
the earliest relationship shapes the baby's nervous system. She shows
how the development of the brain can affect future emotional well being, and
goes on to look at specific 'pathways' that can affect the way we respond to
stress and can contribute to conditions such as anorexia, addiction, and
anti-social behavior.
Sue Gerhardt is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist
who co-founded the Oxford Parent Infant Project (OXPIP), a pioneering charity
that provides psychotherapeutic help to parents with their babies.
Brain scans and MRI's have turned fields like
psychology and psychiatry into data rich fields, after decades and centuries
of almost pure speculation. Modern technology enables scientists to
really see how the brain works under different conditions.
The O.J. Simpson trial was the wake-up call.
Years ago, psychology, psychiatry and sociology were the "soft"
sciences while physics, mathematics and chemistry were the "hard"
sciences.