Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness

by Frank Tallis and frank-tallis

Book Overview

Obsessive thoughts, erratic mood swings, insomnia, loss of appetite, recurrent and persistent images and impulses, superstitious or ritualistic compulsions, delusion, the inability to concentrate -- exhibiting just five or six of these symptoms is enough to merit a diagnosis of a major depressive episode. Yet we all subconsciously welcome these symptoms when we allow ourselves to fall in love. In Love Sick, Dr. Frank Tallis, a leading authority on...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560256478
• ISBN13: 9781560256472
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
• Length: 318 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.7" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Nature ways of making humans continue

Well written clinical hypothesis that the emotion of love mimics mental illness long enough to twart judgment and cause people to bond and continue the species. Many of the cognitive reactions to a love object do resonate with symptoms of mental imbalance. The only cure seems to be the passage of time and the fading of the fantasy. Love in the romantic sense really is a mimicking of impaired judgment and impulse control because people have been known to do "crazy" things in the name of love - leave spouses for an inappropriate person, quit jobs to move to another country halfway around the world, buke convention, make silly public displays of affection that one day is a source of embarassment, etc. The drive to "love" probably is mother nature's way of tricking overthinking humans into continuing the species. So the next time you think its love, just remember you might just be crazy temporarily. In fact, unrequited love, puppy love, etc isn't really love, its just limerance mixed with fantasy. The dark side of love is its capacity to drive people to the depths of despair so often knowing its animbalance can help the lovesick heal out of "heartbreak" faster and easier. There is no heartbreak either, just a facet of the same "crazyness". Maybe one day modern medicine will create a medical cure so no one ever experiences heartbreak, heartache, or love's crazy impact on our better judgment.

The truth

Tallis writes on the biological and psychological truth on "romantic" love, even though most people don't want to hear it. This book is an academically sound work on the evolutionary psychology of humans and "romantic" love (that it's purpose is procreation and survival of the species). Procreation is so important for a species that that's why when we "fall in love", many basically act psychotic (obsessive thoughts, melancholy for un-returned love, etc). I can't wait to read his other works!