At the Crossroads of Love and Power

The book by clinical psychologist Elaine Aaron examines this issue in full and provides ways to address it. The first concept encompasses love, attachment, support, and cooperation. The second is related to competition, the desire to possess power or status. Different areas of the cerebral cortex are responsible for the functioning of these two systems; the way their interaction is structured determines a person's life scenario. Imagine a situation where someone lives for a long time with ideas about the unreliability of close relationships, rejecting attachment as such, endlessly replaying the same scenario. Such a person is unhappy themselves and makes those dear to them unhappy as well. It seems there is no effective weapon against such a destructive practice, as everything is controlled by the brain. Nevertheless, 'innate' does not mean 'insurmountable,' Aaron is confident. She reinforces the importance of this thought with examples from her clinical practice, emphasizing that knowledge of innate characteristics helps better adapt to them.