The Therapy of Love
Good Fit
- Readers who want to look at love through poetry, quotations and a warm, encouraging tone
- Anyone looking for a short, easy and uplifting book on love
- Readers who want to see classic Turkish poets' lines on love in one place
Not a Fit
- Readers looking for scientific evidence, contemporary psychology and research: most claims are unsourced
- Anyone who wants practical solutions to real problems in their relationships
- Readers who look at gender roles from an egalitarian perspective: the book uses old stereotypes about women and men
The introduction says that love is «the only reason that keeps people alive and ties them to life» and can be regarded as «a source of healing, a therapy». Part one begins with a biological definition: oestrogen in women and testosterone in men are the hormones that invite love, and the levels of endorphin and other substances also rise. The author says «because hormonal activity lasts longer in men, the age of love is longer in men» but gives no reference. For unrequited love the name «pathological black-love syndrome» is used.
The following headings are a collection of definitions: quotations from Abdülhak Hamit, Cenab Şahabettin, Fuzuli, Balzac, Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, a heading «Love is a smile between two lives» and a section that refers to religious narratives (Moses and Joseph). The book's weakness also shows here: in the section «Love Is the Power of the Brain» extrasensory practitioners are cited, it is said that the «energy dimensions» around people are «proved by scientific data», and that in times when love ends, floods, famines and natural disasters have «been established» to occur. No source is given for any of this.
The section «Love Is an Electricity» argues that the body's electricity, together with hormones, is the main cause of love and explains, by water flowing between two vessels, how love «flows from the dominant lover to the other». It writes that people fall in love more in summer because of the greater electricity in the air. In «Love Is Fertile», examples of motherhood in cats, deer, pelicans and monkeys are given, and in «Love's Eye Is Not Blind» the meanings of eye colours are listed: green eyes express «coquetry», hazel «cheer», light blue «unfaithfulness», black «sincerity».
The sections «True Love Does Not Run Straight» and «Love Cannot Be Learned» are more practical: economic dead ends and interference by families may shake a relationship, but love should withstand it. Love is called an «art» in Havelock Ellis's words. As kinds of love, first love, lightning love (do not rush to name it «love» at first sight), impossible, forbidden and platonic love are listed. Platonic love is said to be common among young girls in love for the first time.
The section «The Physiology of Love» refers to brain studies done with fMRI and to dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin: in the first stages of love, 90% of waking time is spent thinking of the beloved, appetite drops and energy rises. It is claimed that phenylethylamine is abundant in chocolate and that antidepressants destroy it. This section is the more scientific-looking but still unsourced part of the book. «Love Embracing the World of Plants and Animals» is full of anecdotal examples such as geese killing themselves after the mate dies and the lion's devotion to the lioness; the author even advises against keeping a monkey at home.
The section «The Power of Love» writes that people emit electromagnetic waves, that love is the joining of these waves, that meetings are not «chance» but «tevafuk» (meaningful coincidence), and that there is a «sixth sense, seventh sense, even a sixteenth sense». People are divided by their waves into three: those that do not attract each other, those that flee each other and those that attract each other. The next section, «Love in the Body», regards sexual closeness as meaningful «when joined with chastity», in Tolstoy's words, and explains it within the frame of «lawful pleasure».
- A literary definition of love through quotations of poems and sayings (Fuzuli, Nedim, Abdülhak Hamit, Hugo, Balzac, Shakespeare)
- Short sections and subheadings: each section is one idea in a few paragraphs
- Examples from the animal world (cat, pelican, lion, goose)
- At the end, letters of the 1970s and famous love stories (Romeo and Juliet, İlhan–Ayten Gencer)
- The moral frame of love through references to religious texts and poets
The classic that analyses love as an art that can be learned
A practical book on how love is expressed in everyday relationships
A book that looks at love within a psychological theory
In the section «The Power of Love» the author writes that people emit electric rays and electromagnetic waves, and that love is the joining of those rays: if the rays do not match, they collide and bounce back; if they match, they merge. Meeting the beloved in an unexpected place while thinking of them is said not to be chance, and the force that prepares such a meeting is called «the power of the Creator».
At the end of the section people are divided into three groups. Those whose waves do not attract each other pay no attention to each other and feel no closeness. Those whose waves flee each other see each other as cold or even feel antipathy. Those whose waves attract each other take pleasure in one another, feel sincere closeness and sympathy, and say «our stars are at peace» or «my frequency matches». The author writes that such people show «sex appeal», that is, emotional and sexual compatibility. No study is cited for this classification.
The physiology section makes one more claim: the physical and personal traits of the person you will fall in love with are fixed between the ages of 2 and 8 and «coded as data» in the brain, and on meeting someone with these traits an automatic orientation follows. In the introduction, the author writes that the way to the healing that cures a thousand and one troubles «is through falling in love at once».
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