My Years With Proust - Day 535

   As soon as Albertine had gone out, I felt how exhausting was her perpetual presence, insatiable in its restless animation, which disturbed my sleep with its movements, made me live in a perpetual chill by her habit of leaving doors open, and forced me - in order to find excuses what would justify my not accompanying her, without, however, appearing so unwell, and at the same time seeing that she was not unaccompanied - to display every day great ingenuity than Sheherazade.  Unfortunately, if by a similar ingenuity the Persian storyteller postponed her own death, I was hastening mine.  There are thus in life certain situations that are not all created, as was this, by amorous jealousy and a precarious state of health which dos not permit us to share the life of a young and active person, situations in which nevertheless the problem of whether to continue a shared life or to return to the separate existence of the past poses itself almost in medical terms: to which of the two sorts of repose ought we to sacrifice ourselves (by continuing the daily strain, or by returning to the agonies of separation) - to that of the head or that of the heart?

Marcel Proust, The Captive, p. 127

"Unfortunately, if by a similar ingenuity the Persian storyteller postponed her own death, I was hastening mine."

In his neuroscience book The Accidental Mind, Dr. David Linden proposed:

"Most other animals are able to find their own food immediately after weaning, but human children do not achieve this level of independence for many more years.  As a consequence, the reproductive success of a female human is much greater if she can establish a long-term pair bond with a male and he contributes in some form to childrearing.  Males tend to buy into this arrangement for two reasons.  One is that if the male plays along he can be confident of paternity; he won't be wasting his resources supporting the offspring of another male.  Another is that he, and the female, will enjoy the bonding that comes from frequent sex.  This bonding and reward is enough to keep humans having sex even when conception is impossible (during pregnancy or after menopause).
   In this story the key point is that human females need male help in certain aspects of childrearing much more than females of other species because human infants are totally helpless and even toddlers and small children are incapable of fending for themselves.  Why is that?  Recall that the human brain at birth has only about one third of its mature volume and the early life is crucial for the experience-dependent wiring and growth of the brain." Linden, pp. 149-150

Essentially, what Linden is saying is that the brain is playing a trick on us to push us together, and to keep us together, with tricks such as concealed ovulation and orgasmic rewards.  I'm not certain that I completely agree with Linden, and only partially because of my own romantic view that love is, as Sherwood Anderson wrote, the "divine accident of life."  It does, however, bring up the physiology of love and desire.  I often show my students this TedTalk from Dr. Helen Fisher on the brain during love and sex.  I think the most interesting part of the talk focused on the brain when you've been dumped, and how all those seemingly crazy (and which we associate with the "heart" and emotion - and tell ourselves that we could get over the pain if only we could rely on our logical minds/brains) things we do are actually engineered by the brain as part of its cruel, and by definition heartless, master plan.  It reminds me of the period after the end of marriage when everything had fallen apart and it appeared that I was not going to be with either of the two women who had dominated so much of my life for years, and I would just lie on the floor of my office in actual, physical pain.  Heartache wasn't a metaphor, it was a physiological reality.  Which brings us back to Woody Allen's observation in Manhattan that the brain is the most overrated organ.  It's certainly the cruelest.  While we often mock religion and chide their adherents for relying upon their hearts instead of their minds - and demanding rational proof - maybe we should just accept that the heart is the best part of humanity.