Sample #4 – “Romantic Love” from “The Hormones of Love” chapter of “Sex & the Subconscious”

This excerpt ends Chapter 3 of the eBook “Sex & The Subconscious:  Perversions and Diversions in the Realm of the Libido” by Dr. Arthur Janov

The Difference between Romantic Love and Sex

Romantic love exists.  Emotional attachment exists.  Yet they involve different brain structures and different biochemistry than what drives pure, lustful sex.

Once there is attachment or love, a separation can cause pain.  Oxytocin helps to quiet this pain and can function very much like other neurotransmitters and inhibit suffering.

To listen to my patients is to understand the terrible pain of a child separated from his parent; the cry of separation is an attempt to bring that parent back close again; it is true in nearly all animal forms.

There is a structure within the brain known as the cingulate cortex, which is responsible for that cry.  This cortex is like an arc overlaying the limbic/feeling area and also deals with aspects of emotion.

This area plays a role in maternal care and loving.  The cingulate cortex is responsible for making the chemicals of comfort, and is also involved in inducing a sense of empathy, the ability to feel what others are feeling.

The cingulate cortex is endowed with endorphins, internally produced painkillers.  When animals cry (as a result of separation from their mothers), these painkillers surge forth to ease the pain.

When such a separation is abrupt and goes on for a long time, the baby’s pain becomes imprinted in the brain and remains.  It is more pain than what a young body can tolerate.

Mother Nature knows that a baby needs two parents to care for him.  Pair bonding is the result of two adults becoming attached, having sex, having a child, and loving that child.  With the love these parents themselves received early in their own childhoods, they have the oxytocin and vasopressin that enables them to love their own child.

Love is the foundation, therefore, for survival because when it is lacking, the child does not get the love he needs and he suffers, and the system becomes skewed and dislocated.  Later, there may be disease and premature death as a deviated system is forever out of whack.

A baby needs to be caressed and feel the sense of touch, which is the baseline of 0f love.  Without it, the brain changes and is less adaptive.

Alterations inside a pregnant woman, who does not want her baby, can affect the brain development in the womb so that the frontal cortex of the fetus becomes impaired.  This has implications for later learning and adaptation.

The mother’s attitude, if not loving, adversely affects her fetus.  It is one reason that we cannot be taught to love later on, though we can be taught to behave in a sociable manner.  Love is not something to be taught.  It is something we learn through our experience.

When the stimulating hormone, dopamine, and the repressive hormone, serotonin, are both at proper levels, there can be feeling and love.  When serotonin is too high, there is too much repression and the ability to love is less.  When dopamine is too high there is too much agitation and not enough cuddliness to allow love.  A proper balance is needed among all the hormone systems.

This is particularly true with oxytocin in females and vasopressin in males.  After sexual orgasm, both of these levels rise by hundreds of percent in both parties, as if to say that attachment and closeness are part of sex or perhaps “should be,” according to nature.  It’s nature’s way of saying that sex should be taken seriously and is part of the syndrome of romance.

Constant random sex has nothing to do with love and is more or less a release of tension.  It actually contradicts nature.

However, there are two different brain/biochemical systems involved – one for pure sex and the other for attachment.  We can be attached to someone and still have sex with someone else without love.  There is evidence that in the latter case – sport-sex – the oxytocin and vasopressin levels are lower.

What are we to make of all this?  That love exists and it has physical effects.  It can sculpt our brains early on.  It is an intimate part of sex, and it ensures healthy development, both physically and mentally.

Love is not an ethereal entity, but something we can measure.  It may be a more accurate gauge of our state of being than all the protestations of love we might make.  Love really does make the world go round.

Sample #3 – “Vasopressin” from “The Hormones of Love” chapter of “Sex & the Subconscious”

This excerpt continues Chapter 3 of the eBook “Sex & The Subconscious:  Perversions and Diversions in the Realm of the Libido” by Dr. Arthur Janov

Loving feelings are transmitted to the fetus through the biochemistry and oxytocin levels of the pregnant woman, and then later through physical contact, which again raises oxytocin levels.  If we were not loved early on, looked at, touched, listened to, nuzzled and adored, those biological changes, subtle though they may be, follow us throughout our lives.  Yet a mother who takes good care of herself, is not depressed or anxious, does not take drugs, and eats properly, will produce a loving child.

If the traumas of birth, pre-birth and early childhood are inundating the system there will be an eventual overload and breakdown of the neuro-inhibiting, suppressing systems – serotonin, as well as oxytocin.  There are many chemicals that live in the gaps between nerve cells, neurons; some push back and some facilitate the message of pain.  They are either information blockers or enhancers.

Supplies of neuro-inhibitors will be used up over time in the fight to keep pain down.  These supplies are not inexhaustible.  It is the very earliest pains that have the highest valence and require the greatest amount of inhibition.

These biochemicals will be used in the battle against emotional deprivation.  The system will eventually be less sexual as the hormones of love become transmuted into the job of holding down pain.

A therapist can ask us, “Were you loved?” and we may insist, “Absolutely,” yet we are betrayed by our oxytocin levels, which are far too low, and by our stress hormone levels, which are far too high, and also by our hormone levels which may be quite deviated.  They speak too.

The body and its physiology do not lie. Indeed, we may have been loved after birth, but suffered severe traumas in the womb of which we remain completely unaware.

Another hormone, vasopressin, contributes to male nurturance of offspring – it makes for caring fathers.  It also has pain-killing effects and helps make animals venture out and be more exploratory.

If vasopressin is blocked, there is immediately less paternal behavior.  When injected directly into a section of the brain of male voles, vasopressin increased their paternal behavior.  They couldn’t be loving fathers without it.

Vasopressin is a counterbalance to oxytocin, creating more aggression and territoriality in animals.  Scientists recently took mice that are loners and injected a gene of vasopressin into them.  This was taken from the prairie vole, known to be gregarious and faithful to its mate.  Result:  they became more social, more caring about female partners and spent more time with them.  They were generally nice to them.

Both vasopressin and oxytocin have a role in brain maturation.  When there is trauma early in the brain’s development, such as in the womb, the maturation of the brain is hampered.  This is where the old adage, “We don’t have all our marbles,” comes from.

A brain that suffers such impairment is a different brain, thanks in part to these two neuro-hormones.  It is crucial when synapses are being organized and neuronal networks being set, that there is a proper balance between these neuro-hormones to support a healthy process of brain development.

Vasopressin and oxytocin, which are similar in molecular structure, can be traced back millions of years through evolution.  We see from this that love and attachment have always been important to mammalian organisms, and closely related to sex and reproduction.

Sexual activity increases oxytocin levels.  In sexual arousal, vasopressin is at its peak, while oxytocin peaks during ejaculation.  Vasopressin cells are concentrated in the amygdala, in the feeling centers of the brain.

It is love that motivates us toward reproduction, towards sex.  When there is little oxytocin, there is no attachment.  When there is no attachment, there is no love.  When there is no love, survival is at stake.

Love, therefore, is a key survival mechanism, and that is why it plays such an important role in human social commerce.  It is the first step toward survival of the species.

Male rats treated with vasopressin during the first week of life were more aggressive later on to strangers.  Vasopressin, released when there is stress to the system, can be combated by oxytocin.  This may seem strange, when they are so molecularly similar and can use the same receptors.

Vasopressin plays a role in determining partner preference, and in some male animals encourages the selection of specific female partners.  It is one essential element in pair bonding in animals.  It is also associated with testosterone, which increases vasopressin levels.

When we “love” there is a chemical component.  It is my hypothesis that the more intense the love feeling the higher the oxytocin level.  And the reverse may also be true – the higher the oxytocin level, the more love there is to give.

To be clear, love changes the entire physical system and can be measured in any number of systems.  This is just another way of stating that the love we receive early in life helps our ability to love and have healthy sex later on.

There is a hidden implication in all this, however:  Even though we may swear we love someone, our biochemicals may betray us.  So here is the second lesson:  Stress, pain and anxiety are all enemies to love; they deplete our chemical supplies, the essential elements of love.

Research has shown, as I noted, that when the bellies of animals are stroked, not only is more oxytocin secreted into the system, but blood pressure drops, as well.  Most importantly, there is a shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic dominance, as the relaxing, rest and repair system takes over to promote survival and good health.

Love is calming and normalizing.  While oxytocin helps lower blood pressure, pain raises it.  That means a lack of love raises blood pressure, which is what we see in our patients; after one year of reliving pain, blood pressure drops an average of 24 points in the group.

Oxytocin in animals inhibits the secretion of stress hormones, known as glucocorticoids.  When the system is in a vigilant mode, the oxytocin levels drop and the anxiety system heightens.

Oxytocin release is an important aspect of serotonin secretion.  They work in harmony to help us repress pain.

Sample #2 – “Dopamine” from “The Hormones of Love” chapter of “Sex & the Subconscious”

This excerpt continues Chapter 3 of the eBook “Sex & The Subconscious:  Perversions and Diversions in the Realm of the Libido” by Dr. Arthur Janov

Another key neuro-hormone, dopamine, helps maintain an optimum level of brain stimulation.  Like oxytocin, very early experience can alter this hormone’s set points.

For example, a pregnant woman who takes tranquilizers will block dopamine output in her fetus.  Later in life, the need for a stimulant such as cocaine occurs when dopamine levels are chronically exhausted; cocaine artificially increases dopamine in the synapses between brain nerve cells.  One may get hooked on cocaine in order to feel more aggressive and outgoing, to experience more pleasure and fun in life; it can transiently produce greater self-confidence and an
ability to confront others.

Dopamine also kills pain, in the sense that it is a feel-good hormone.  This is all what would have happened if one had a healthy gestation and a warm loving early childhood – then it would be unthinkable for anyone to get hooked on cocaine.  Cocaine can temporarily make up for the lack of love, but it cannot last.  Cocaine has an effect only when early love is missing; it takes some of the fear out of the system and produces a “can do” attitude.

Ah, but that’s exactly what mother’s love would have done!  Why does one develop an addiction, then?  Because one has to go back to the drug again and again in order to produce the good feeling.

There are many kinds of hormones that play into love and sex; I am extracting these for discussion and to show how early experience affects adult behavior.

Many years ago we studied testosterone in our male patients.  We also classified those who were low on testosterone as parasympaths – those dominated by the passive, reflective, healing nervous system.  Those who were high in testosterone tended to be sympaths, meaning they were more aggressive, goal seeking, optimistic and ambitious (looking ahead, an analogue of the birth process).  After one year of Primal Therapy, those who were low on testosterone tended to rise, while those who were very high tended to come down a bit; in brief, their systems would normalize.

When it comes to love, however, oxytocin is by far the most important hormone.  The question we now face is what came first: lowered oxytocin and then the inability to love and to bond, or the lack of early love, which lowered the set points of oxytocin?

I would choose the latter.  Because hormones are so sensitive to early trauma, we must take care not to blame high or low levels to genetic factors.  We must never forget the critical nine months of life in the womb.

Bonding is the most positive aspect of human relationships.  We learn how to bond emotionally in adulthood through early bonding in childhood, as simplistic as that sounds.

It cannot be taught!  And it certainly cannot be taught in later life.  Attachment is pretty well set in our childhood.

It is not something we learn; it is something we feel.  It is also something biochemical.

Those who did not bond very early on with their parents may well be condemned to a lifetime of broken, fragile, tenuous relationships.  It may be in large part due to deficits in the hormonal wherewithal such as oxytocin.

Oxytocin researcher Thomas Insel has remarked that, “Many of the affectional ties to the mother observed post-natally (after birth) could be laid down by pre-natal experience.”  Life in the womb may determine life outside the womb for decades to come.

If the early relationship with one’s parents was distant, alienated and glacial, it may be a harbinger of the love relationships we have or don’t have later in life.  The earlier the alienation from one’s parents, the more trouble there may be in relationships later on.

I have seen it in hundreds of my patients.  It approaches a biologic law – if my sampling of our patients is any index.

Sample #1 – “Oxytocin” from “The Hormones of Love” chapter of “Sex & the Subconscious”

This excerpt starts Chapter 3 of the eBook “Sex & The Subconscious: Perversions and Diversions in the Realm of the Libido” by Dr. Arthur Janov

There is a hormone, not well known, that is critical in making a strong emotional rapport with others, known as oxytocin.  Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone that is a key hormone of love.  When the level of oxytocin is low there is less emotional attachment, less interest in social engagement, less caring and bonding, and less touch … in short, less love.

“Less love” has a physical base.  Less love early in our lives can be found in an imprint, which affects many systems.  These effects are measurable.  In some respects, love is a measurable entity.  The imprint affects sexuality, particularly how key brain structures such as the amygdala and hippocampus translate pain into sexual behavior.

Oxytocin is found only in mammals.  When it is high, one experiences a sense of relaxation, rest, and growth, repair and healing, loving behavior and emotional-attachment.  Love and nurturing early in our lives are necessary for optimum health, and healthy brain development cannot take place without it.

It isn’t just that low oxytocin levels are an indicator of early neglect and lack of touching, it also indicates a dysfunction of the entire system, and serves as a prognosticator of our later mental and physical health.  Its presence says, “I was loved and could develop normally,” its lack says, “I was unloved and my
system is skewed.”

In the same way that we may increase sexual drive in males with testosterone injections, it may well be that we can “inject love” into people, or at least inject a hormone that encourages it – give people a shot of love, so to speak.  This shot may help us attach to others and bond with partners, allows us to feel close to someone else, to feel and empathize with their feelings and pain.

Bonding is a strong emotional attachment that helps us want to be with one another, to help and protect one another, and to touch and become sexual with one another.  High levels of oxytocin encourage and strengthen bonding.  Because early trauma and lack of love affect the output of this hormone, the ability to relate and have good sex later is determined even before birth and just after.

Someone can swear she is full of love, only to find herself very low in the essential hormone of love – oxytocin.  It is actually good news that “less love” has a physical base, for there may be something we can do chemically to alter that state, and there is certainly something we can do psychologically to change it, as well.  At sometime in the future we may be able to determine what proper love from a parent to a child is through the measurements of various hormones.

It has been proven that early parental love is a permanent painkiller.  Rats who were able to self-administer painkillers by pressing a lever did not do so when given oxytocin.

Oxytocin (OT) inhibits the development of a tolerance to drugs such as morphine, and also decreases the painful withdrawal symptoms that occur when one is taken off these drugs.  The degree of addiction can be measured by the severity of one’s withdrawal, yet oxytocin reduces the severity of these symptoms.

Love will do the same thing, but early love calibrates the system for life.  A current shot of love, such as someone hugging and kissing us, may well change the levels temporarily.  If we rub the belly of an animal the oxytocin levels will rise immediately, but once the initial critical period of the system’s development has passed, every change we can effect will be transient.

Once we arrive at adulthood, oxytocin levels are fairly set.  One can be given a shot of it, but it will not have a permanent effect, for once low levels of oxytocin or high levels of stress hormones are registered early in life, it is difficult to re-establish normal set points.

After the critical period to receive love is over, the only way to normalize the system is to neuro-chemically relive the early events that dislocated the set points.  We must feel again “unloved” in all its agony if we are to ever have any chance at normalization; and that agony has numerous biochemical components, which are measurable.