Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness [Paperback]

Dr. Frank Tallis Dr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2005

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 obsessive disorders, considers our experiences and expressions of love, and why the combinations of pleasure and pain, ecstasy and despair, rapture and grief have come to characterize what we mean when we speak of falling in love. Tallis examines why the agony associated with romantic love continues to be such a popular subject for poets, philosophers, songwriters, and scientists, and questions just how healthy our attitudes are and whether there may in fact be more sane, less tortured ways to love. A highly informative exploration of how, throughout time, principally in the West, the symptoms of mental illness have been used to describe the state of being in love, this book offers an eloquent, thought-provoking, and endlessly illuminating look at one of the most important aspects of human behavior.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The idea that romantic passion is a mental illness may not be the most welcome message for Valentine's Day, but Tallis, a British clinical psychologist, acknowledges that it's a condition for which we may never want a cure. Tallis includes a good deal of research testifying to the obsessive nature and destructive power of romance. He begins by tracing the medical diagnosis of love based on physical symptoms to the Greek physician Galen. Leaning heavily on Darwin, Tallis considers the role of love in perpetuating the species: for instance, he notes, hidden ovulation in women (rather than the loudly advertised ovulation of chimpanzees, whose rear ends turn bright red) may secure a man's fidelity, since he doesn't know when she is most fertile. Based on the results of a survey conducted by a marketing consultant, the author surmises that men fall in love more often than women and experience the emotion more intensely. He also cites a study showing a low divorce rate in Asian cultures with arranged marriages as proof that these marriages are more satisfactory than Western marriages. Lauding rationality in the choice of a mate, he makes questionable comparisons between the role of dating services in the West and arranged marriages in the East. He ends this lively but not always convincing study with the unromantic conclusion that amity and mutual understanding must balance passion for love to last.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 332 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 2nd edition (January 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560256478
• ISBN-13: 978-1560256472
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #759,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nature ways of making humans continue, December 4, 2008

By 

M. R. Estante "book reader" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness (Paperback)

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars He Gets It But Has No Answer, August 8, 2011

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jonny_fred - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness (Paperback)

I have sort of mixed feelings about this book. If you are struggling with a broken heart and the anguish that love can bring, this author portrays a deep understanding of the risks of loving passionately. The book is well researched and has a number of interesting references from history and literature. For me, this book served to illuminate that others have struggled in a similar way to myself.
Dr. Tallis is a British psychologist with a deep understanding of lovesickness, so I placed a lot of hope on finding answers here to help me overcome what has become a major wall in my life. I thought perhaps he knew a way to alleviate the psychic pain and give some semblance of peace of mind. I waited to reach that point in the book, and it never came. It ended, somewhat abruptly, and though there were parts that were quite validating, there was no suggestion of a plan to deal with the problem so aptly described. It is possible that the reason it fell short of providing this is because such a solution does not exist. If you are unlucky enough to know what I am talking about, you also may have a wound that will simply never heal.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, Thought Provoking and Helpful, October 30, 2010

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INTJ "INTJ" - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness (Paperback)

This is a very well-written, thorough exploration of how romantic love has been experienced and regarded throughout history in different cultures. Drawing on an impressive store of knowledge of history, literature and psychology, the author makes a very persuasive case that romantic love is an evolutionary adaptation to encourage pair-bonding of sufficient length for the male of the species to participate in protecting and providing for offspring. Lest that seem utterly "unromantic," he makes a distinction between the white-hot infatuation of love at first sight and the more mature and prolonged "companionate love" that keeps couples together. It's fascinating the see the similarities between the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder and manic-depression and the experience of being "love sick." If this were a standard textbook for first-year college students, it could save a lot of heartache and bad decisions.