That was a Ben Jonson reference, BTW.
“There are whole segments of the population that prefer being in the company of dogs than people, and I’m not sure that’s such a negative thing,” said Joel Gavriele-Gold, a psychoanalyst in private practice in Manhattan and the author of “When Pets Come Between Partners.”
In a recent study, Lawrence Kurdek, a psychologist at Wright State University in Ohio, found that college students who had a high level of attachment to their dogs showed greater attachment to the pets than to their fathers. Their attachment to their mothers, siblings and best friends was just about the same as their attachment to their canine companions, Kurdek found.
The study, reported in the April issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, found that the students who were most strongly attached to their dogs did not show high levels of anxiety or avoidance – characteristics that some therapists would expect to see in people with unusually fierce bonds to animals.
The finding, Kurdek wrote, supports the idea that “people strongly attached to their pet dogs do not turn to pet dogs as substitutes for failed interactions with humans.”
Poor fathers.
people strongly attached to their pet dogs do not turn to pet dogs as substitutes for failed interactions with humans.â€Â
Life Imitates “Silence of the Lambs”
Still, he said, he has seen patients who, betrayed and wounded in childhood, have turned to a cat or dog for the uncritical support and love they never received.
I’m not feeling too bad for *those* fathers.
Psychological research peformed on American college students probably shouldn’t be generalized to the population at large; more fascinating, in a sick, sad, way, are the middle-aged women who refer to four-legged companions as “fur children” and insist that the cat is their “child.” But you can’t force those women to come in and be studied as part of their grade.
people strongly attached to their pet dogs do not turn to pet dogs as substitutes for failed interactions with humans.â€Â
Then its the cats.
– Pets are typically excellent listeners.
BBH, except cats, who always take over the conversation and start going on and on about the bug they saw out the window earlier that day…
I thought it was Dorothy Parker who said “The more I see of men, the more I like dogs.”
Coulda been Mae West, I suppose.
I might for a free kitten. uh, I mean “they”. They might show up for free kittens.