Great Throughts Treasury

"In order for the amygdala region [of the brain] to respond to fear reactions, the prefrontal region has to shut down."

"One of the things we know about fear is that you can always bring it back. So if either a rat or a person, with the previously learned fear, is exposed to stress, the fear will return. And so if a patient with a fear of heights is doing fine because of the therapy, and then the patient's mother dies and it's very stressful and so the phobia comes back."

"From the point of view of the lover, the only thing important about love is the feeling. But from the point of view of trying to understand what a feeling is, why it occurs, where it comes from, and why some people give and receive it more easily than others, love, the feeling, may not have much to do with it at all."