On Romantic Love: Simple Truths About A Complex Emotion with Dr. Berit Brogaard

Romantic love presents some of life's most challenging questions. Can we choose who to love? Is romantic love rational? Can we love more than one person at a time? And can we make ourselves fall out of love?

Dr. Berit Brogaard is a Professor of Philosophy with joint appointments in the Departments of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Miami as well as the Network for Sensory Research at the University of Toronto. Her educational background includes a medical degree in neuroscience and a doctorate in philosophy. Her areas of research include perception, synesthesia, blindsight, consciousness, neuro-psychiatry and emotions.

Her latest book, On Romantic Love: Simple Truths About A Complex Emotion, attempts to get to the bottom of love's many contradictions. The book, informed by both historical and cutting-edge philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, combines a new theory of romantic love with entertaining anecdotes from real life and accessible explanations of the neuroscience underlying our wildest passions.

Against the grain, Dr. Brogaard argues that love is an emotion; that it can be, at turns, both rational and irrational; and that it can be manifested in degrees. We can love one person more than another and we can love a person a little or a lot or not at all. And love isn't even always something we consciously feel. However, love -- like other emotions, both conscious and not -- is subject to rational control, and falling in or out of it can be a deliberate choice.

Join Dr. Berit Brogaard and me on Tuesday, March 20, 10-11 A.M. CT US. We will be having a conversation about her life’s journey and her innovative look at a universal topic behind heartbreak, obsession, jealousy, attachment, and more.