ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every book comes to life in that luminous place wherein minds intersect and hearts meet. From the first germ of an idea to the neat flutter of pages a reader holds in his hand, a book owes its existence to the collaborative efforts of a dedicated band—and this work, with its trio of primary collaborators, more so than most.
In 1991, when I encountered Dr. Amini and Dr. Lannon at the University of California, San Francisco, the former had been there for twenty-eight years and the latter for twelve; they had been working together since 1970. Between them they had treated thousands of patients and taught hundreds of physicians and therapists-in-training. I was in my training residency at the time, reeling under the bombardment of contradictory and dubious doctrines that constitutes a modern psychiatric education. While I knew little about psychiatry and less about people, I was able to recognize that the seminars Dr. Amini and Dr. Lannon led were remarkable—a psychoanalyst and a biological psychiatrist teaming up, with amity and respect, to discuss psychotherapy, development, mood disorders, and love. Readers unfamiliar with the divisive quality of academic psychiatry may not appreciate the rarity of such a pairing—comparable, say, to finding a Montague and a Capulet taking turns quaffing beer out of a single stein in the local pub.
That notable conjunction was only the beginning of the unexpected. The richly complex seminars that Drs. Amini and Lannon wove were not easy for the intellect to grasp or words to frame. A good many residents were dazed and baffled. At first blush, I took my teachers’ apparent and maddening imprecision to be evidence of a certain vagueness of thought fairly epidemic in the field. Eventually, with a dawning sense of wonder, I realized that my incomprehension represented not ineptitude on anyone’s part, but necessity—the two were speaking from another plane, as it were, about matters not readily translated into words. I came to understand that in the course of their clinical careers (long before mine began), Drs. Amini and Lannon had accumulated an impressive store of wisdom about the ways of the human heart. They steadfastly resisted the fatal simplifications and seductively pat solutions that we residents demanded of them daily, because they were certain that such satisfying shortcuts would be meaningless. Instead, they actually tried to impart to their students the hard-won secrets that are expressible, as music is, in a language very different from one to which people are most accustomed.
This approach to psychiatry and to the teaching of psychiatry was wholly novel; to this day I have encountered nothing like it anywhere. I decided then that if I was to learn what a psychiatrist—or anybody—needs to know about the human heart, I would learn it from Drs. Amini and Lannon or not at all.
After I graduated from the residency, Dr. Amini and Dr. Lannon permitted me to join them in teaching the same seminars in which I had first encountered that resonant dimension wherein emotional life takes place. A successful two-party collaboration is difficult enough to manage, and one among three people, more precarious still. Nevertheless, our triumvirate proved itself the improbable miracle. When we combined our ideas and energies, ideas flew fast and thick. Most revolved around the centerpiece of Dr. Amini’s clinical work: a conviction of the life-shaping force inherent in emotional contact between two minds.
We set about learning all that we could about the biological reality of that elusive and powerful phenomenon. Pursuing such a project required more knowledge than any of us possessed. And so for years, we collected every fact relevant to emotional life, and we met on Saturday mornings to pore over the findings. Over orange juice and muffins and eggs, we taught one another arcane information from unfamiliar schools, and we listened, explored, and argued. The stray elements slowly began to cohere. Their ultimate synthesis finds its expression in this book.
Much has transpired between those weekend colloquys and the book you hold in your hands. Early incarnations of our ideas were tested on successive waves of UCSF psychiatric residents. On the whetstone of their affable skepticism, we honed our concepts. We delivered presentations to professional audiences at UCSF Grand Rounds, the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, and at the annual meetings of the American Group Psychotherapy Association and the American Psychiatric Association (joined, in most such outings, by friend and colleague Dr. Alan Louie). The resulting professional dialogues assisted us in further defining our thoughts and our mission.
When we had achieved a certain minimal level of coherence, we published a compact summary of our paradigm in the journal Psychiatry. The masochistic reader who unearths the relevant issue of that benevolent journal may find a few glimmers of our ideas visible there, peeking out from under the crushing density of academic language. When we departed the university in 1996—first Dr. Amini, then Dr. Lannon, and finally myself—we resolved to devote the time thus freed to setting down our theory of love, in readable form, within the pages of a book.
When I set out to distill our shared ideas into words, to give them a voice and a form, I encountered a formidable obstacle: I did not know how to write well enough to succeed in that endeavor. “No invective can adequately excoriate this dreadful book,” I read some decades ago, in a review of a now forgotten work. It is my sad duty to report that this judgment applied equally well to the first draft of the manuscript that I produced in attempting to translate these ideas into a verbal language. The book would have foundered then and there, on the shoals of my ignorance, had I not been fortunate enough to encounter Dr. Glenda Hobbs. I am deeply grateful to her for teaching me nearly all that I know about writing. Ages ago, the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu wrote, “To see things in the seed—that is genius.” In this instance that credit belongs to Dr. Hobbs—who, by means of an alchemical art I cannot fathom, discerned a valuable core behind the dross of verbiage that constituted this book’s first draft and was instrumental in bringing the best to the fore.
A number of people were kind enough to read permutations and portions of the manuscript, in its various stages of undress, and offer their useful comments: Liz Amini, Cecilia Lannon, Sue Lewis, Christina Amini, Alan Langerman, Linda Motzkin, Sue Halpern, Caryl Gorska, David Berlinski, Robert DiNicolantonio, Aimee West, Ezra Epstein, Kristen Engle, Maia Wilkinson, Mike Meixel, and Deb Seymour. My good friend and colleague Ed Burke was particularly generous in his willingness to read countless versions without complaint, and he lent me not only his keen eye but also his voluminous knowledge on every conceivable subject. Mark Powelson’s encouragement and guidance took a novice through the vast, thicketed wilderness of inexperience and up to the very gates of the publishing industry. Our heartfelt thanks to Lisa Motzkin of Motzkin Design, whose lovely art graces this book’s interior. Paul Ekman, Robert Wallerstein, and Judith Wallerstein, longtime friends and colleagues, have been valiant supporters of this book, and we appreciate their indispensable efforts on its behalf.
Drs. Wallerstein and Wallerstein were kind enough to speed us on to our agent, Carol Mann, to whom we are profoundly indebted. Her advice and guidance on innumerable matters have been invaluable. While we had hoped that we could interest an agent in our work, we never dreamed that we would encounter someone whose grasp of and enthusiasm for the book exceeded, in some respects, our own.
The same is true of the devoted team at Random House, where so many people have treated this book with loving care; to all of them, our deepest thanks. Scott Moyers’s ardent dedication to this project has been a crucial inspiration. He wielded his editorial blade with a surgeon’s precision and an artist’s finesse, and spurred me on to reach for the better book he believed in, lurking beneath the surface of the one I had shown him. We could not have found more able or careful hands into which to entrust the fruit of so many years’ labor. Kate Niedzwiecki provided tireless assistance on matters too diverse and numerous to tabulate. Benjamin Dreyer, assisted by Jennifer Prior, eradicated from the text a multitude of missteps, major and minor, and guided the book through production with consummate skill and concern. The loveliness of Andy Carpenter’s jacket design speaks volumes for itself, in its own silent and evocative medium. The passionate support of Random’s deputy publisher, Mary Bahr, has been exhilarating and pivotal. Our sincere thanks to Ann Godoff, Random House’s president, publisher, and editor in chief, for her unwavering enthusiasm and vital creative input.
Our patients have taught us much, and we owe them a debt of gratitude for the privilege of inviting us into their lives and for their courage to meet us in the arduous challenge of change. Finally, we wish to thank our respective families, without whose love and forbearance none of this could have proved possible.
In assembling this account of the causative factors, the formative agents that impinged on the book from prehistory to final configuration, I am struck by the improbability of the whole enterprise—that these words should be assembled in this order within these covers. Without the participation and fervor of each person enumerated above (and many others who are not so listed) there would have been no book, or, at least, a very different and inferior one. On just such a fragile chain of coincidence does every life hang—leaving all the more reason for joy and celebration when, against apparently insurmountable odds, matters turn out right.
Thomas Lewis, M.D.
Sausalito, California