In Benedict Carey’s, “The Brain in Love”, Carey takes an incredible amount of time to study the effects of the human mind when engaged in romantic activity. Carey attempts to do this in a plethora of methods, such as referencing cultural values and scientific advances in order to illustrate the effect of love on human brains. At the start of his analysis, he begins by addressing some of the preconceptions behind love, specifically that of its origin. From the perspective of a rhetorical analysis, it seems a very efficient motive to attempt to create a background for a subject before an analysis is delivered. After all, it is an inefficient strategy to address a concern without initially defining where this concern might stem from. He does this by briefly discussing the origins of love, and how the rationale for its existence within human culture remains much of a mystery. Within the introduction of his analysis, Carey addresses this factor with deep consideration. “We know that there’s an inborn human urge to mate, after all. Love is a mystery, a promise, an arrow from Cupid’s bow.” (Carey, 400) Through the addressing of the mystery, and through the alluding of this cultural myth, Carey creates a familiar sense of understanding that all humans could relate towards, to further the importance of his study.

Following this brief moment of introspection, Carey begins to discuss the many different possible reasons for this mystery, briefly discussing all of the different possible reasons that humans love in the first place. This leads him to the main focus of his rhetorical analysis, that being the biological reasoning behind romance. Carey explicates that the biology of love assists greatly in understanding a specific form of love. “The biology of romance helps account for how we might think about passionate love, and explain its insanity…” (Carey, 400) In our Russian Love and Literature class, we briefly covered the many forms of love, so from the perspective of analysis, it is clear that he means to address the effects of Eros, or passionate love, within the human mind.

Moving forwards, Carey begins to discuss his intent for studying the effect of Eros within human brains, as well as the narrowing out of a particular study group to measure off of. Carey then moves his own analysis to the works of Helen Fisher, an anthropologist who is interested in conducting an experiment on 18 college students recently invested within romantic relationships, as his own analysis becomes centered more around scientific analysis rather than cultural preconceptions of love. Fisher realizes rather expeditiously, after 3.000 brain scans of an MRI machine of her target group, that their brain activity patterns are displayed differently from that of a friend, to that of a romantic partner, already indicating that Eros can be measured within the human mind. (Carey, 401) Connecting back towards our Russian Love and Literature sessions, we understand that the Ancient Greeks also had a word for describing the type of love that occurs without romantic attraction, and the type of sensation that was usually shared between family members or friends, that being Philia. Fisher’s study indicates that each of these forms of love have a different effect on the brain, which is why their MRI scans could be vastly different.

Carey then turns his attention towards two neurobiologists, Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki, who study the effects of Fisher’s experiment in great detail. They note that the brain scans that show the effects of Eros, or romantic attraction, have shown activity within the areas of the brain that have a high concentration of dopamine, which is the main chemical messenger behind reward factors and pleasure. Bartels and Zeki then compared the MRI images to brain scans from people within other emotional states, such as that of sexual arousal or drug induced euphoria to explicate that these brain scans were very similar to those of people who were in romantic love. (Carey, 401) From the perspective of a rhetorical analysis, this creates a very intriguing twist onto his case study, as it indicates that in a literal sense, romantic love and sexual arousal can be compared to a form of euphoric arousal brought about by drug usage. It creates a sense of understanding within an analysis based perspective, as it explains why individuals within love often perform extreme actions to preserve it, just as someone under the influence of an addiction to drugs might perform extreme actions to attain more drugs. What Carey previously describes as a mystery is suddenly a much more cohesive and descriptive definition, as the sensation of romantic love is now able to be compared to other phenomena we might interact with in our daily lives. 

It becomes clear at this iteration of his essay, that his thesis is quite literally to explicate love being comparable to that of drugs, on the human brain. And to further elaborate this perspective, Carey then motions to describe two other experiments that may have a relation to sensations of drug usage to measure their relation to Eros. These experiments were conducted by Ellen Berscheid, and a separate group of psychologists within a 1996 study. Following Berscheid’s study of idealization within partners, Carey concludes that idealization is crucial for a longer term relationship, through, “…magnifying the other’s virtues and explaining away their flaws.” (Carey, 402) This is also common within prevalent drug usage, as people who develop a dependency towards drugs often rationalize their dependency as something that is productive towards their usage of it. This is an extremely efficient usage of information to support Carey’s thesis, because it shows first hand how the relation of drug usage and passionate love could have similar effects within a similarly important area. Carey indicates that the presence of romantic love benefits most from idealization and self ratifying, just as drug addicts rationalize their addiction. 

Lastly, Carey interpolates the work of the group of psychologists from 1996, who study the effects of idealization within that of long term relationships. They also conclude that those who idealized their partner ended up having a longer relationship with them, but with the added notion that eventually, even this form of passionate love must be readdressed, because with long term usage, it begins to depreciate the relationships value. “If passionate romance is like a drug, then it is bound to lose its kick.” (Carey, 403) Carey interpolates this final piece of evidence in order to create the argument that passionate romance, or Eros, is similar in its behavior to drug usage once again. Repeated drug usage is infamously known for being incredibly addictive because of the sensations that they can create within the human body, but they are also infamously known for creating a sort of depression within the human brain from repetitive over usage. 

From a rhetorical perspective, Carey finalizes his analysis of love and drug usage extremely efficiently, through the description of their effects on the human brain throughout all possible stages of their usage. Not only does Carey discuss in detail about something as mysterious and elusive in definition as love, but does he compare it to something that we can easily understand and even continue to research, which seems to drive away the figurative fog clad behind our understanding of love and its preconceived notions. Thus, we can conclude that Carey forms an incredibly powerful argument on the presence of love within human brains.