Plan of the Book
  
     This book represents the first scientific study ever published on
the subject of love-shyness. The book has five essential purposes: (1) to
create a compassionate awareness and understanding of a long neglected
and ignored segment of the American male population; (2) to help the
public better understand and constructively deal with the love-shy; (3) to
help the love-shy better understand themselves and to clearly see that
they are not alone--and that they need to unite as a social and political
force on behalf of their own interests; (4) to delineate as fully and com-
prehensively as possible all of the causal antecedents of love-shyness;
and (5) to delineate and explain the most promising modalities for both
the treatment and the prevention of love-shyness.
     The remaining chapters of this book are organized into three sections.
The chapters in the first section (Part One) are concerned with the bio-
logical underpinnings of severe shyness. This book endeavors to be quite
thoroughgoing in its approach to the subject of inborn factors. There
are more myths and falsehoods floating about pertinent to the relation-
ship between biology and shyness than there are about any other shyness-
related issue. These myths must be arrested and corrected if the love-
shy are ever to be properly understood and successfully helped. In the
absence of a valid understanding of the biological basis of shyness, there
is no way severe and chronic love-shyness can ever be prevented or
successfully treated.
     The chapters contained in Part Two of this book are based upon
an original investigation of 300 love-shy men, 200 of whom were between
the ages of 19 and 24 when the data were obtained, and 100 of whom
were between the ages of 35 and 50. This study also incorporated a
comparison group of 200 non-shy men, all of whom were between the
ages of 19 and 24, when the data were obtained from them.
      The chapters contained under Part Two systematically compare the
 love-shys with the non-shys on such important matters as (1) past family
 life with the mother and father, (2) family composition, (3) peer group
 life throughout the formative years of childhood and adolescence, (4) the
development of early boy-girl romantic interests, (5) current sex life and
sexual attitudes/values, (6) current social and demographic characteris-
tics, (7) current life styles, (8) employment effectiveness, (9) medical
symptoms, (10) physical characteristics, (11) the need for physical beauty
in a lover, (12) loneliness, (13) parenthood aspirations, (14) social-political
attitudes and values, and (15)artistic and recreational interests and
predilections.
     The many comparisons that are made between the love-shy and
non-shy men provide a host of very useful insights as to what the key
factors are which cause and sustain pathological love-shyness. Each of
the chapters in this section provides a unique constellation of insights
which should ultimately prove very useful in both preventive and ther-
apeutic work.
     The chapters contained in Part Three deal with therapy and pre-
vention. The chapter on "practice-dating therapy" introduces a thera-
peutic approach which will effectively cure 95 to 100 percent of even the
most severe and intractable cases of love-shyness. This is perhaps the
most important chapter in this book because it contains a detailed dis-
cussion of all the important aspects of a procedure which can ultimately
emancipate the love-shy to the point where they are able to experience
the love relationships to which they are eminently entitled. Hopefully
this chapter will serve as an inspiration to all who work with the love-
shy.
     Prevention is similarly a very important subject. In a whole host
of ways contemporary American society both creates and assures a cer-
tain amount of pathological love-shyness. The chapter on prevention
provides a discussion of some thought-provoking, innovative ways of
engineering our society so that painfully severe forms of shyness are
effectively prevented from ever developing in the first place. Without
inconveniencing the lives of the non-shy and without spending a great
deal of money, there is a very great deal that can be done right now
which could totally obviate the development of any new cases of severe
love-shyness.
     Finally, a summary chapter is provided which highlights the major
points of the book as a whole. An overview is provided in this last
chapter of some of the major recommendations towards which my
research conclusions seem to point.
      In sum, love-shyness is not the mild little developmental problem
 that some people think it is. Love-shyness is a potentially very serious
 problem that is in society's best interests to prevent and to cure. It is
 my hope that this book will serve to effectively point the way toward
 that end. 3


Notes

        1. As incisive testimony to the inadequacy of Dr. Zimbardo's approach, Zimbardo's
own "shyness clinic" at Stanford University had to be disbanded because its therapeutic
approach was simply not working. In fact, it was making many of its clients worse off
than they had been when they had first sought aid.
       2. As per WPIX (New York Channel 11) evening news (broadcast 11/23/84), ten
percent of the letters which nationally syndicated advice columnist Ann Landers has received
of late have been complaints about shyness. According to Landers, the proportion of her
letters containing complaints about shyness has increased noticeably over the past several
years. The so-called "sexual revolution" has provided no relief for those afflicted with
shyness-related problems.
       3. Shyness among university males is by no means rare. In 1967, Ellis and Lane
found that 25 percent of all university males surveyed were quite socially inactive due to
shyness. They further found that 8 percent of all graduating seniors of heterosexual
orientation had yet to experience their very first date with a girl. A study published in
1973 by Landis and Landis, further revealed that better than half of all college students
experience at least occasional severe shyness symptoms vis-a-vis the opposite sex in infor-
mal social situations; and 25 percent of them were found to be victims of such severe
shyness that they seldom or never dated. Only 23 percent of those surveyed were found
to be always or nearly always comfortable in informal interaction with opposite sexed age
mates.