
Why Love Matters explains why love is essential to brain development in the early years of life particularly to the development of our social & emotional brain systems & presents the startling discoveries that provide the answers to how our emotional lives work. Sue Gerhardt considers how the earliest relationship shapes the baby's nervous system with lasting consequences & how our adult life is influenced by infancy despite our inability to remember babyhood. She shows how the development of the brain can affect future emotional well being & goes on to look at specific early 'pathways' that can affect the way we respond to stress & lead to conditions such as anorexia addiction & anti-social behaviour. Why Love Matters is a lively & very accessible interpretation of the latest findings in neuroscience psychology psychoanalysis & biochemistry. It will be invaluable to psychotherapists & psychoanalysts mental health professionals parents & all those concerned with the central importance of brain development in relation to many later adult difficulties.