magazine issue 6 2008 / Issue 7

Love at First Sight

• written by Stephen Bertman
• edited by Helen Lee Lin

The ancient Greeks provided an answer of sorts in the myth of Narcissus. According to the Roman poet Ovid, Narcissus was an extraordinarily handsome but self-centered young man who spurned all his lovers. Finally, one of them cursed him by praying that someday Narcissus should himself feel the pain of unrequited love. One day while walking through the woods, Narcissus came upon a pond and gazed into its waters. As he did so, he saw the face of a handsome young man looking up at him. Desiring to embrace the beautiful youth, Narcissus dipped his hands into the water but, as he did, the image broke up. Each time he drew closer to the surface of the water, the object of his love seemed to draw closer to him but, each time he reached into its waters, the image again disappeared. Frustrated in his self-love, a despondent Narcissus continued to sit by the edge of the pond until he finally withered away and died. Even in death, Ovid tells us, Narcissus continued to gaze at his own image in the waters of the river Styx.

The myth of Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, and teaches us the mesmerizing power of self-love, a power that can – if we are not vigilant – consume and destroy us. To be mindlessly attracted to a replica of the familiar face in our mirror may, in fact, be a prescription for a broken heart.

The Birds and the Bees

In fact, it may not be the face we see in our mirror, our own face, that guides us in the choice of a mate. The face that functions as our erotic template may in fact be one we saw long before we ever knew what a mirror was.

The observations of British naturalist Spalding (1873) and German zoologist Heinroth (1910) paved the way for research onimprinting in chicks and goslings. When goslings were hatched in an incubator (and were thereby prevented from seeing their actual mothers), they instead became attached to the first human beings they saw, and responded to them as though the people were their parents. Heinroth concluded that the first image the goslings saw somehow became stamped or "imprinted" on their impressionable young brains.

This theory of imprinting was later elaborated by the Austrian zoologist Lorenz (1937) and in decades of subsequent research (Lorenz, 1937, (1988; (Todd & Miller, 1993). As a result of his close observation of ground-nesting birds like ducks and greylag geese, Lorenz concluded that imprinting occurs quickly, takes place only during a critically brief period of time (usually by the first morning after hatching), and is irreversible. Deprived of the sight or sound of its mother, a little duckling or gosling will "adopt" as its parent the first thing it sees and/or hears: a human being (especially if he or she quacks in response to a hatchling’s plaintive peep), or, strangely in the absence of a voice, even a silent inanimate object like a cardboard box, a red balloon, or a white ball. If young ducks or geese imprint on a human, they will affectionately follow in a gaggle wherever their "parent" leads, a phenomenon that was strikingly illustrated in 1993 when Canadian artist and inventor Bill Lishman helped forgetful geese migrate 400 miles from Ontario to Virginia by training them to follow his ultralight airplane, and again the next year when he led another flock of avian amnesiacs by air all the way to South Carolina. By using imprinting to induce the geese to follow his airplane, Lishman became "Father Goose". His aerial exploits are described in his autobiography and were imaginatively and poignantly reenacted in the 1996 family film "Fly Away Home", starring Jeff Daniels. Lorenz’ basic theory of filial imprinting is now well documented and accepted by the scientific community. Investigators have even identified the part of a bird’s brain that enables a chick to imprint (Horn, 1998; McCabe & Nicol, 1999).

In addition to advancing the theory of filial imprinting, Lorenz also proposed a theory of sexual imprinting. According to this theory, the image imprinted on the brain of the young animal (originally designed by nature to make it easier for an offspring to identify and find its nurturing parent) also has the effect of defining and determining its mating preferences in the future. Thus, upon becoming sexually mature, the young animal seeks out a mate that closely resembles the parental imprint implanted in its brain.

A Lasting Impression