This self-access class explores how our deep-rooted need for love can be manipulated to control, coerce, and abuse. Drawing on her latest insights from neuroscience and anthropology, Dr Anna Machin examines the biological and cultural foundations of control within intimate relationships.
The class explains how love—while essential to human survival—can become a powerful tool of manipulation when paired with inequality, fear, and unmet attachment needs. Dr Machin unpacks how hormonal and neurological systems, particularly those governing bonding and reward, play a role in reinforcing abusive dynamics.
From an anthropological perspective, the class also considers how different societies shape the way control and abuse are normalised or challenged.
Designed for Psychosexual and Relationship Therapists, this self-access class deepens our understanding of the mechanisms behind abuse and provides guidance on identifying and responding to coercive patterns in clinical practice.
About the Trainer
Dr. Anna Machin is an evolutionary anthropologist, writer, and broadcaster. She is world-renowned for her work exploring the science behind our closest human relationships, including those between lovers, parents and children, and friends.
She has a particular interest in the science of fatherhood including the biological changes a man undergoes as he transitions to fatherhood, the nature and development of the attachment between father and child and the role for fathers in child development.
She is passionate about campaigning for support and recognition for fathers as co-parents. She is the author of The Life of Dad: The Making of the Modern Father (Simon & Schuster 2018).
