Customer Reviews

Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness

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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.

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.

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.

Very good book. I can very much recommend this to two groups in particular; Those who love psychology and those in unrequited love. It will be of great interest to one and of great inspiration to the other.

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!