Sweet Sorrow

This book defines the centrality of love and loss in human life and in human meaning. Bowlby's Attachment theory forms the basis for understanding our selves and our relationships. Alan Eppel proposes that love is the subjective experience of attachment and that dyadic relationships are the source of ultimate meaning. He supports his theses with a tour de force integration of ideas from attachment theory, psychoanalysis, neuroscience and existential philosophy. He argues that the quality of attachment between mother and infant lays the foundation for the formation of individual identity and ultimately shapes our capacity to engage in relationships with others. Eppel describes loss as the reciprocal of attachment and considers the enormous influence of loss on our moods, sense of identity, and our desire to live or die. The final segments of the book describe the implications of this analysis and links it to the meaning and purpose of human life.All of us seek to understand the meaning of life, and especially the meaning of our own lives. Anyone with a curiosity about love and loss will find this book attractive, as it provides insight and illumination to many of the human circumstances that people encounter in their day to day lives. It will appeal to sophisticated lay readers in addition to various categories of student and professional audiences. It will be of interest to psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, philosophers, neuroscientists and sociologists. Readers with a background mainly in the arts and humanities will find it appealing because of its linkages and use of poetry, song and visual art to elucidate and illustrate the major propositions of the book.