James Lynch, The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness
(New York: Basic Books, 1977).
James Lynch is a psychologist who specializes in psychosomatic disorders, which are based on the theory that emotional distress can result in bodily diseases. In the present work, this means that loneliness and a lack of personal fulfillment, mostly grounded in an absence of intimacy, can negatively affect the heart. Accordingly, the study postulates that the loss of human companionship, social isolation, and the sudden deaths of loved ones is the leading cause of premature deaths from heart attacks at five times the rate of married spouses. The study maintains that heart disease is especially prevalent among the loneliness prone, the children from broken homes, the singles, the divorced, and the widowed. Lynch describes loneliness as an “ultimately inter-subjective human experience” (page 183). Further, he characterizes it in the following terms: “Human relationships are not objective, and the very attempt to objectify them creates distance between you and those individuals with whom you are trying to relate. Those aspects of human relationships that can be weighted objectively are not the same as those aspects of human relationships that are experienced personally…What cannot be objectively defined, however, is the very process of communication, for objectively examining a conversation is diametrically opposite to engaging in one. To assess the process objectively, one must detach one’s self from it” (page 194). This passage is especially significant because Lynch believes that meaningful positive communication, “dialogue” between individuals is the best means of warding off loneliness. “Dialogue is the essential element of every social interaction; it is the elixir of life. The wasting away of children, the broken heart of adults, the divorced, the widowed—common to all these situations, I believe is a breakdown in communication…those who lack dialogue early in life can perish quickly while those who lose it as children, adolescents and adults feel acutely what they have lost and struggle to get it back” (page 215). Positive dialogue intrinsically develops mutual trust. In its most general meaning, dialogue consists in the well-intentioned reciprocal communication between two or more conversants. It involves a mutual exchange, a sharing of feelings, thoughts, and values (page 217). The author accordingly provides the reader with a dramatic example of failed communication by recounting the legendary tale of Frederick II of Sicily, who wished to discover the original human language, which he in turn speculated was Hebrew. In order to test his hypothesis, he removed all newborn children from their natural mothers and instructed their foster custodians not to converse or interact with the infants beyond ministering to their physical needs. Alas, the entire experiment failed badly since all of the children died once they were prevented from being emotionally nurtured.
Not legendary but factual are Lynch’s discussions regarding the famous “marasmus” and :hospitalism” researches conducted by Margaret Ribble, Dorothy Burlingame, Rene Spitz, John Bowlby, Anna Freud, and others, who studied the extensive physical, psychological, and intellectual wasting away that results when a child is deprived of emotional nurturance. Spitz, for example, observed that in many instances, infants who suddenly lost their mother’s would refuse to eat and would eventually succumb even when force fed. Others became depressed (“anaclitic depression”), fearful, angry, and anxious (pages 77, 216-218).
Lynch also offers an interesting instance involving a pair of institutionalized thirty-one-year-old schizophrenic twins, who one night were separated, because the staff believed they were re-enforcing each other’s negative behaviors, only to find the next morning that one of the sisters had died of a heart attack. Upon questioning the surviving sister’s roommate on that fateful night, it was found that she had spent all night long staring toward the dead sister’s window across the courtyard.
In Harry Harlow’s celebrated monkey experiments, it was discovered that after the birth of the infant monkeys, which were raised only with lifeless terry cloth substitutes with button eyes, the young monkeys clinged desperately to the cloth surrogates and became terrified when the inanimate figures were removed from their cages: “the social isolation ultimately destroyed them emotionally. When they matured, they refused to breed, and some killed their own offspring when impregnated” (page, 179). They also demonstrated profound signs and symptoms of emotional imbalance and depression (pages 178-179). As Lynch also points out, frequently dogs, when very anxious, will voluntarily undergo a great deal of pain in order to be with their masters and mistresses.
On a more decidedly sociological level, Lynch recapitulates the fully documented results of the Framingham Project. The longitudinal, 25-year study was originally structured to uncover an assumed strong connection between smoking, poor diet, and premature chronic heart conditions in the small predominantly Italian and Catholic community of Framingham. But instead what it showed was actually a very low incidence of premature heart attacks, which was attributed to the especially close sense of belonging and intimacy between family members and the community at large. These, as it turned out, contributed greatly to good mental health and resulted in a longevity grounded in a closeness of association, which was exceptionally emotionally supportive despite its poor physical practices of habitual smoking and overeating (pages 18-19).
According to Lynch, the real villain in this scientifically- and objectively-determinable tragedy of increasing heart problems in America is by way of misdirection. The mistake is to be directly attributed to the false dualistic separation of mind from body. It is Descartes, blames Lynch, who, with his emphasis on two distinct substances, mind versus body, is responsible for relegating the emotions to the subjective, mental, and hence unscientific realm of the mind, while in reality it is solely, Lynch asserts, the body which truly constitutes the sole proper scientific sphere of valid study. The unfortunate result is that it led researchers early on and over the centuries to believe that the emotions had nothing to do with the body or the heart. Lynch instead proposes, therefore, that we emphasize and limit our study to the emotions and recognize their physical properties alone sinc they exhibit a genuine import as well as a vital effect on the body and the heart. And to clinch his case, he cites the instance of a comatose patient whose spouse touches her mate’s feet and the tactile pressure elicits a graphic response on the electrocardiograph (the heart) but leaves the electroencephalograph (the brain) needle unmoved.
Throughout the study, Lynch‘s conclusions are supported by numerous graphs, statistics, and scientific data.
Not legendary but factual are Lynch’s discussions regarding the famous “marasmus” and :hospitalism” researches conducted by Margaret Ribble, Dorothy Burlingame, Rene Spitz, John Bowlby, Anna Freud, and others, who studied the extensive physical, psychological, and intellectual wasting away that results when a child is deprived of emotional nurturance. Spitz, for example, observed that in many instances, infants who suddenly lost their mother’s would refuse to eat and would eventually succumb even when force fed. Others became depressed (“anaclitic depression”), fearful, angry, and anxious (pages 77, 216-218).
Lynch also offers an interesting instance involving a pair of institutionalized thirty-one-year-old schizophrenic twins, who one night were separated, because the staff believed they were re-enforcing each other’s negative behaviors, only to find the next morning that one of the sisters had died of a heart attack. Upon questioning the surviving sister’s roommate on that fateful night, it was found that she had spent all night long staring toward the dead sister’s window across the courtyard.
In Harry Harlow’s celebrated monkey experiments, it was discovered that after the birth of the infant monkeys, which were raised only with lifeless terry cloth substitutes with button eyes, the young monkeys clinged desperately to the cloth surrogates and became terrified when the inanimate figures were removed from their cages: “the social isolation ultimately destroyed them emotionally. When they matured, they refused to breed, and some killed their own offspring when impregnated” (page, 179). They also demonstrated profound signs and symptoms of emotional imbalance and depression (pages 178-179). As Lynch also points out, frequently dogs, when very anxious, will voluntarily undergo a great deal of pain in order to be with their masters and mistresses.
On a more decidedly sociological level, Lynch recapitulates the fully documented results of the Framingham Project. The longitudinal, 25-year study was originally structured to uncover an assumed strong connection between smoking, poor diet, and premature chronic heart conditions in the small predominantly Italian and Catholic community of Framingham. But instead what it showed was actually a very low incidence of premature heart attacks, which was attributed to the especially close sense of belonging and intimacy between family members and the community at large. These, as it turned out, contributed greatly to good mental health and resulted in a longevity grounded in a closeness of association, which was exceptionally emotionally supportive despite its poor physical practices of habitual smoking and overeating (pages 18-19).
According to Lynch, the real villain in this scientifically- and objectively-determinable tragedy of increasing heart problems in America is by way of misdirection. The mistake is to be directly attributed to the false dualistic separation of mind from body. It is Descartes, blames Lynch, who, with his emphasis on two distinct substances, mind versus body, is responsible for relegating the emotions to the subjective, mental, and hence unscientific realm of the mind, while in reality it is solely, Lynch asserts, the body which truly constitutes the sole proper scientific sphere of valid study. The unfortunate result is that it led researchers early on and over the centuries to believe that the emotions had nothing to do with the body or the heart. Lynch instead proposes, therefore, that we emphasize and limit our study to the emotions and recognize their physical properties alone sinc they exhibit a genuine import as well as a vital effect on the body and the heart. And to clinch his case, he cites the instance of a comatose patient whose spouse touches her mate’s feet and the tactile pressure elicits a graphic response on the electrocardiograph (the heart) but leaves the electroencephalograph (the brain) needle unmoved.
Throughout the study, Lynch‘s conclusions are supported by numerous graphs, statistics, and scientific data.
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