Love as a Powerful Elixir

        Further testimony as to the highly deleterious consequences of
love-shyness can be seen in work that has come out of the U.C.L A.
"love laboratory". It seems that there is a very big difference (especially
for men) between being involved in a love relationship wherein there is
actual interaction between the man and the woman and the two people
love each other about equally, and the sort of unrequited "love" situation
where either (1) the boy loves the girl and she is not even aware of his
existence, or (2) the boy loves the girl a great deal more than she loves
him. The latter situation might best be described as infatuation, rather
than "love".  And it has been found to be especially commonplace among
the ranks of love shy males of all ages.
      Such romantic infatuation in the absence of real interaction and
sharing tends to be associated with such classic symptomology as loss
of appetite, insomnia, inability to concentrate on work or studies, behav-
ioral instability, a sharp dropping off in grades at school, inefficiency,
uncooperativeness, the need to walk or run around the town aimlessly,
and the need to walk (or run) around all day long in a stuporous world
of daydreams and fantasy. This is the type of symptomology which
poets down through the ages have associated with "being in Iove"~
fact which suggests that many classic poets may well have been seriously
love shy themselves indeed, poets very often are "dreamers" rather
than "doers", and chronic dreaming about the same theme is normally
a reflection of wish-fulfillment--of a way of coping with a problematical
void in everyday living.
      In stark contrast, the U.C.L.A. love researchers found mutual love
relationships to be associated with a dramatically different kind of symp-
tomology. Young men who were actively involved in mutual love rela-
tionships (wherein the girl interacted with and loved the young man in
return) tended to be fired up with an intense vibrancy, exuberance, and
"aliveness" that even the best adjusted among them had never known
before. This vibrancy and natural enthusiasm was associated with (1) better
grades in school, (2) an increased capacity to deeply concentrate when
they did sit down to study, (3) better and more efficient use of time,
(4) increased participation in social activities with their own gender, (5) an
improved appetite, (6) an increased ability to sleep soundly when they
did go to bed, (7) an ability to remain effective with less sleep than they
had required prior to falling in love, (8) better health, (9) increased atten-
tiveness to all facets of personal appearance and grooming, and (1O) an
outward appearance and general ambiance that made their friends and
acquaintances view them as looking better, more alive and vibrant, than
they had formerly known them to be
      One of the most important findings to emerge from this "love
laboratory" research was that (1) men who were involved in a genuinely
reciprocated love relationship tended to have an extremely bright, very
strong Kirlian aura, whereas (2) men who were involved in unrecipro-
cated infatuations tended to have a very weak, "sick" kind of Kirlian aura
of a type commonplace among severe neurotics, hypoglycemics, and
some schizophrenics.
      Dr. Thelma Moss is one of America's most respected psi research-
ers. Specializing in Kirlian Photography, which is a form of electrical
photography which permits the photographing of the human aura
(sometimes called the etheric or bioplasmic body), Dr. Moss had her lab-
oratory in the same U.C.L.A. building as that which contained the "love
laboratory". And she took full advantage of the opportunity to photo-
graph the Kirlian auras of (1) those in reciprocated love, (2) those not
in love, and (3) those involved in unrequited, unreciprocated infatuations.
     Involvement in a reciprocal love relationship was found to benefit
women in much the same ways that it benefitted men. And this included
the Kirlian aura. However, the findings were substantially weaker for
the women than they were for the men. Certainly the experience of
being in love did not harm any of the women studied. But being in love
tended to have a much more nearly neutral impact upon the women
subjects than it had upon the male subjects. On the other hand, in one
significant respect the women studied were better off than the men: In
particular, women were found to be substantially less vulnerable than
men towards becoming involved in nonproductive, non-reciprocal
romantic infatuations of the sort which the researchers found to give
rise to the first quite negative set of symptoms.
     Finally, when women did become involved in unreciprocated
romantic infatuations, the effect upon their Kirlian aura was minimal.
In other words, unrequited love tended to very adversely affect the
corona of a young man's Kirlian aura; the effect of unrequited love
feelings upon a woman's aura tended to be minimal. On the other hand,
being involved in a real love relationship tended to galvanize a young
man's Kirlian corona into a brilliant, full-bodied glow. The effect of such
a love relationship upon a young woman's Kirlian aura was also notice-
ably positive. But the effect was substantially less dramatic than what
had obtained for the men.
     In sum, becoming involved in a genuine love relationship appears
to constitute an extremely beneficial, life-enhancing medicine for young
men. The love experience is at once a kind of elixir of life, a sort of
fountain of youth and of vibrant aliveness and of masculine effective-
ness. It might also be seen as representing the richest form of fertilizer
for the cultivation of social self-confidence and expressive interpersonal
skills. Besides being immediately life-enhancing, such positive outcomes
are bound to exert a positive impact upon a man's lifetime productivity
and general effectiveness.