    20

    Social attachment is just as vital to human beings.  Research

    psychiatrist Dr. George Engel collected 275 newspaper accounts of

    sudden death.  He discovered that 156 had been caused by  severe

    damage to social ties.  One hundred and thirty five deaths had been

    triggered by "a traumatic event in a close human relationship."

    Another 21 had been brought on by "loss of status, humiliation, failure

    or defeat."  In one instance, the president of a college had been forced

    to retire by the Board of Trustees at the age of 59.  As he delivered his

    final speech, he collapsed with a heart attack.  One of his closest

    friends, a doctor, rushed to the stage to save him.  But the strain of

    losing his companion was too much for the physician.  He, too, fell to

    the floor of the platform and died of heart failure.48

    Our need for each other is not only built into the foundation of

    our biological structure, it is also the cornerstone of our psyche.

    Humans are so uncontrollably social that when we're wandering

    around at home where no one can see us, we talk to ourselves.  When

    we smash our thumb with a hammer we curse to no one in particular.

    In a universe whose heavens seem devoid of living matter, we address

    ourselves skyward to gods, angels and the occasional extra-terrestrial.49

    Our need for other people shapes even the minor details of our

    lives.  In the early 1980s, a group of architects decided to study the use

    of public spaces outside modern office buildings.  For over twenty

    years, architects had assumed that people long for moments of quiet

    contemplation, walled off from the bustle of the world.  As a

    consequence, they had planned their buildings with solitary courtyards

    separated from the street.  What the architects discovered, to their

    astonishment, was that people shunned their secluded spots.  Instead,

    they parked themselves on low walls and steps near the packed

    sidewalks.  Humans, it seemed, had an inordinate desire to gawk at

    others of their kind.50

    Even mere distortions in the bonds of social connectedness can

    affect health.  According to a study by J. Stephen Heisel of the Charles

    River Hospital in Boston, the activity of natural killer cells--the body's

    defenders from disease--is low for people who, on the Minnesota

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