Don't tout the notional

The Language of Love was a very popular book in some circles when it was published in 1988.  It was a book about how to use word pictures to express one's affection. I heard a number of people talking about it at the time, but I didn't read it. Yesterday, a conversation I heard on how to talk to a spouse triggered a memory in me of this book's title and the gist of the book according to people who had read it.

I looked up the book on Amazon.com and was able to read excerpts from the book.  I found that a revision of the book had been published in 1991 and that in their revised edition, the authors apologized for quoting research and misapplying it in their book about the functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The authors said that they were shown more current research indicating that their applications of the functions of the right and left hemispheres to expressions of love between men and women were without substance.

I admire the intellectual honesty of people who change when others show them when misapplication has occurred.  I wish they had known about some other research that had been conducted so they could have corrected another notion they had as well.  In their authors' note, they claimed that their observations from hundreds of talk therapy sessions (not their research or review of the literature on the subject, only their observations) showed "God-given differences" in the way men and women communicate. Men use a "language of the head," while women lean on a "language of the heart." They went on to say that men speak of facts and when they run out of facts to speak, then they are out of words - they stop talking.

It's time for a GM recall here.  Literature on men and women's language (even in 1991) doesn't show a picture like the one the authors presented here at all, not at all.  I would like to see the notes they made on their observations in order to conclude that men run out of words when the facts they know have been exhausted.  And the language of the head and heart categories are a gross oversimplification of both the styles of their speech and the substance of it.  What? Do women not have a language of the head?  And do men not have a language of the heart?  Absurd.  Of course, they do.  And finally, what the authors attribute to God-given differences seem to be more related to the socialization process dictated by culture.

In 1998 the authors put out study books for their main book so that couples in small groups could learn how to communicate well.  That was 16 years ago, but the thinking they presented in their book continues to make the rounds misinforming people of men's and women's communication process.  I hope that people will have either heard about more recent research or have the good sense to know that observations and empirical study are two very different animals.  For whatever reason I didn't read the book in 1988 or 1991, I am thankful that it steered me clear of some erroneous reasoning and saved me from more "unlearning," which I had to do during the whole decade of life from 1995-2005.  

I am much more careful in my learning these days. These days empirical evidence is the beginning of learning.  I don't have time for notions and observations.