What Is Love? - Helen Fisher

          The general argument/point made by Helen Fisher in her work What is Love? is that love is an instinct obtained through years and year of evolution controlled by chemicals in our brains. More specifically, Helen is saying that love came from the animal need to reproduce and evolved stronger as time as went by until that human need has turned into love; lust, romantic attraction, and attachment. She writes “The primitive brain system for animal attraction evolved into human romantic love.” In this passage Fisher is suggesting that love is a need just like food is because when we see someone physically attractive or feel attached to someone it releases chemicals into our brain such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin that make us happy. In conclusion, it is Fisher’s belief that love evolved from animal instincts to reproduce and care for young into human romantic love, a chemical need.

             In my view, Fisher is right because I don’t know anyone who would want to live life without finding that one special person to spend it with. For example, a kid I went to school with back in junior high killed himself one night because his girlfriend broke up with him and his mother had passed away a few months before that. He felt like in that moment he had no one to love and no one to love him back and that desire for love overpowered his desire to live and so he took his own life.  Although Fisher might object me saying that I don’t believe that love is all chemical, I believe soul is included into it I maintain that love is a chemical need in the brain and although it might start out as just that, it evolves into something much more than an evolved animal instinct. Therefore, I conclude that Fisher is right when she states that love is a chemical need in humans that probably came from animal’s instinct to reproduce but it is not just that, it becomes much more.