LOVE-SHYNESS AND THE NATURE 
VERSUS NURTURE DEBATE


           In discussing their problems the love-shy often say that they feel as though they had been “born
shy”, or that shyness has always been a part of their fundamental underlying nature. And in taking
this position about themselves and their problems the love-shy typically receive little compassion or
understanding from the major power sources of contemporary psychology. Such major figures as Philip
Zimbardo and Albert Ellis continue to insist that shyness is learned, and that until shy people recognize
and accept that alleged “fact” they will not be amenable to help.
        A major purpose behind this book is to show that two quite crucial, dominating components of
shyness are inborn. Nevertheless, much of shyness behavior is a byproduct of a certain process of
learning--a process that is dependent upon inborn attributes and society’s reactions to them.
        A key source of the confusion over this issue rests upon the fact that researchers in the
behavioral and social sciences seldom if ever interact socially with the scholarly researchers of other
disciplines. And as a result they often have little idea as to what is going on in fields other than their
own. Research findings are constantly coming to the fore in such fields as human physiology, genetics,
biochemistry, human anatomy, pharmocology, and microbiology, which have profound implications for
the types of human problems with which clinical psychologists and sociologists deal. Yet with all their
Ph.D.s and extensive learning in their own narrow areas of specialization, extremely few clinical
psychologists or sociologists have any awareness at all of research findings of profound importance
which have been arrived at by biologically and physiologically oriented research scholars. Even more
tragically, they are often unaware of and refuse to consider the biologically oriented work of their own
colleagues.
        Academic people are often perceived by the public as constituting prime models of open-
mindedness and of non-prejudiced attitudes. Indeed, a primary element of the philosophy of science has
long been that any and all hypotheses are worth considering and researching until such time as those
hypotheses have been disproved. Yet almost all clinical psychologists quite blythly reject the notion
that there could possibly be anything “inborn” about shyness. And they are often quite callous and
abrupt with colleagues who challenge “sacred” assumptions and long-standing theoretical ideology.
        Genuine progress towards the prevention and cure of love-shyness can never be effected as long
as scholars and researchers insist upon remaining rigidly married to their ideological and
“therapeutic” belief systems. Progress towards the prevention and cure of this and of countless other
forms of human suffering can only (and will only) be made through the concerted efforts of research
scholars from the full range of disciplines.