Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness

by Frank Tallis

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Mental Health

332 pages, Paperback

Published January 3, 2005

About the author

Aka F.R. Tallis.

Dr. Frank Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist. He has held lecturing posts in clinical psychology and neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry and King's College, London. He has written self help manuals (How to Stop Worrying, Understanding Obsessions and Compulsions) non-fiction for the general reader (Changing Minds, Hidden Minds, Love Sick), academic text books and over thirty academic papers in international journals. Frank Tallis' novels are: KILLING TIME (Penguin), SENSING OTHERS (Penguin), MORTAL MISCHIEF (Arrow), VIENNA BLOOD (Arrow), FATAL LIES (Arrow), and DARKNESS RISING (Arrow). The fifth volume of the Liebermann Papers, DEADLY COMMUNION, will be published in 2010. In 1999 he received a Writers' Award from the Arts Council of Great Britain and in 2000 he won the New London Writers' Award (London Arts Board). In 2005 MORTAL MISCHIEF was shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not like this book at all. It was purchased years ago after reading a stellar review. The author's writing style, bloviated. Catchy title though. I think I'll stick to neuroscience books and skip psychology going forward.

[Jafar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this book is a bit misleading and no doubt was chosen to get browsers’ attention. The book is not an anti-romantic rant. It doesn’t try to denigrate love or deny its power and beauty. Even if you’re an incurable, dyed-in-the-wool romantic, you can still read this book without finding it offensive. Well, maybe you will feel furious on occasions, as the book attempts to prick your romantic balloon, especially with its heavy use of evolutionary psychology. (Sorry, but love really is just nature’s trick to get us propagate the species.) Tallis is not saying that love is an illness in need of curing. What he does say, however, is that it’s an illness if judged by its symptoms. For a short list of these symptoms, read the publisher’s note that is copied in the description of this book.

To begin with, love is mad and irrational. We can fall in love with those whom we don’t even like, if it wasn’t for the blinding effect of love, and continue to profess love in abusive relationships. When in love, we hallucinate and elevate a mere average mortal to a divine status. Even if love is returned, it’s a mixture of pleasure and pain. And horrors if our love is met with the silence of an indifferent heart! Unrequited love is a harrowing torment for the lover, and an oppressive burden on the loved one. The most frightening aspect of love is its obsessive nature. It takes away our most basic right: the right to think about whatever we want to. Love takes hold of our mind. Just like someone with Parkinson’s who can’t help shaking, we find ourselves trapped into thinking about the same person whether we want it or not. And then, to add insult to injury, love goes away. It never lasts. We make up all sort of euphemisms to ignore this fact – “our love has matured into a stable stage” – but love just doesn’t last. It actually ends in bitterness and acrimony quite often.

Of course, just because love can be thought of as illness, it doesn’t mean that it’s any less desirable. As the other book Against Happiness argued so well, pain and agony are the fountains of beauty and creativity. Think of all the great arts and music and literature that are produced because of love. Love provides emotional turmoil, and that’s what makes life more interesting.

I was very, very impressed with Tallis. Not only is he a great writer, he’s a true uber-intellectual. You can immediately tell that he’s astonishingly well-read and knowledgeable. Given our propensity and desire to fall in love, this book should be required reading for everyone. Especially eye-opening are the parts about various recent researches on the neurology and biochemistry of love.

[شمس]

You are locked in my heart, the little key is lost, and now you must stay there for ever. —Princess Alix of Hesse to her Fiancé

The words ‘I love you’ contain an implicit demand. They are incomplete without the answer, ‘I love you too.’
__________
People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open. —Philip Roth, The Dying Animal
__________
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
He exhaled forcefully, so forcefully his breath lifted the first page of my notepad.
‘What . . .’ he paused for a moment before adding: ‘is love?’
I shook my head, unwilling to tackle such a momentous question. His expression coagulated with disappointment. He really wanted me to give him an answer.
‘It’s . . .’ I began, but stopped.
Looking at him then—and being reminded of so many other patients I had seen before in clinics and hospitals—I was tempted to reply: ‘Love is a mental illness.’ However, I suppressed the impulse.
‘Well,’ I began my sentence again, ‘psychologists define love as a strong emotional attachment . . .’ It was an unimpressive response. The words sounded sterile and empty. Hollow science.
He wasn’t convinced—and to tell the truth, neither was I.
My first, unspoken answer was still resonating in my head.
Love is a mental illness.

__________
This book brings up some pretty interesting ideas, find these immediately below:

It was suggested above that love sickness looks, feels, and behaves like a mental illness, and that many of the symptoms of love sickness can be found distributed through the ICD and DSM classification systems. This underscores the fact that being in love produces a symptom profile that would ordinarily suggest significant psychiatric disturbance. When people fall in love, they reliably describe four core symptoms: preoccupation (with the loved one), episodes of melancholy, episodes of rapture, and general instability of mood. Symptoms such as these correspond closely with the conventional diagnoses of obsessionally, depression, mania, and manic depression . . . Consider, for example, the following: depressed mood (most of the day), diminished interest or pleasure in activities, loss of appetite, insomnia, fatigue, and diminished ability to concentrate. Exhibiting only five of these six symptoms sustained for a mere two weeks is sufficient to merit a diagnosis of major depressive episode according to DSM-IV criteria.

Psychological research shows that men fall in love more often than women, experience it more intensely, and are much more likely to celebrate love by composing poetry or songs . . . Women, on the other hand, although capable of experiencing love, tend to be less passionate and more pragmatic—being more inclined, for example, to marry for increased status or money rather than love.

In the East, where spirituality is still very much a part of everyday life, less is expected of love between human beings. The spiritual instinct is satisfied by religious observances, meditation, or scripture. In the West, however, where religion plays no real part n the lives of most people, we have replaced religion with love. We have become passionate pilgrims, seeking the transport and meanings of spiritual ecstasy in the religion of romance and the sacrament of sex.

Although arranged marriages are treated with suspicion in the West, they represent a preference for many who have been raised in Asian and E~astern cultures. It is assumed that a ‘good marriage’ can only be achieved if couples are carefully matched, and then supported by their families. To base a marriage on passion is simply, irresponsible, and likely to result in unhappiness. Surprisingly—for incurable romantics at least—contemporary research does not contradict this view . . . Those whose marriages were arranged show much higher levels of satisfaction than those who married for love. Other studies have produced a similar pattern of results.

The third, or normal, group showed the usual levels of serotonin; however, both the ‘obsessional’ and ‘in-love’ groups showed serotonin levels that had dropped by approximately 40 percent.

Even if we take into account the fact that historically women have always been disadvantaged because of social inequality, the disparity of artistic and scientific achievement that divides the sexes is quite extraordinary. From an evolutionary perspective, tis strongly suggests that male talent has been shaped by sexual selection. Men might appear to be more gifted than women, but this is only because woman have ‘made’ them that way! If women in the ancestral environment hadn’t expressed a distinct preference for gifted mates, such a disparity would never have arisen in the first place.

___________
She was on a pedestal, held there by the sublime and incomprehensible forces of romanticism: forms that it would be sacrilegious to question.

With her hair she ensnares me,
With her eyes she fetters me. —Ancient Egyptian Love Poetry

Ibn Sina is in no doubt that love sickness is a medical condition. Like Galen, he assumes that the physical symptoms of love sickness are the result of a chemical imbalance brought about by psychological factors: principally, obsessing about the loved one. This is a surprisingly modern view, insofar as it recognises continuities between mind and body.

Yet in spite of the distress associated with being in love, he recognised that many aspire to the condition. It is thus, paradoxically, ‘a baffling ailment’, ‘a delightful malady’, and ‘a desirable sickness’.

Burton died on 25 January 1640, very near the time he had predicted on the basis of his astrological studies. This prompted a modest scandal among Oxford students, who suspected that Burton has committed suicide in order to validate his prediction. The fact that he had already written his own epitaph certainly gives some legitimacy to their morbid speculations. Given the nature of Burton’s illness, however, it seems more likely that if he did take his own life, he did so because of depression, rather than scholarly pride.

The first use of the term—employed in the modern sense—is attributed to the scholar Palgrave, who incorporated it into the sentence: ‘I shall fall in love with her.’

Of the typical lover Burton says: ‘it would not grieve him to be hanged, if he might be strangled’ using his beloveds ‘garters’.

A lover whose soul has been consumed with passion.

The principal features of limerence are obsession, irrational idealisation, motional dependency and a deep longing for reciprocation. Typically, limerent individuals pursue inappropriate partners, fail at relationships, and seem unable to learn from their experience.

Although we celebrate love, we also recognise the it can resemble an illness. This, the word love is complemented by love sickness. There is no equivalent construction that relates to any other ‘positive’ mental state. People never become ‘joy sick’, and there is no such thing as ‘delight sickness’ . . . only love has its own sickness.

Darwin did not possess a poetic sensibility. In his autobiography, he wrote: ‘I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.’

My illness is what I want. And my pain is my health . . . I suffer agreeably . . . I am sick with delight. —Chrétien de Troyes

In My Life for Beauty, Helena Rubenstin helpfully suggested: ’There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.’

The average human being can evaluate how beautiful a face is in under 150 milliseconds. Even if given much longer to make the same judgement, most people will not be inclined to change their minds. The brain is sensitive to feature arrangements to within one millimetre.

Another study, conducted by Randy Thornhill in New Mexico, found that female partners of symmetrical men experience 40 per cent more orgasms during sexual intercourse.

The strong desire to possess a perfect partner might lead an individual to project desirable characteristics on to the ‘blank screen’ of a suitable candidate. However, the result is a form of narcissism—a playing-out of egocentric fantasies that will very probably prove emotionally unsatisfying. The beloved becomes something closer to a self-induced hallucination than living, breathing person.

Obsessional thoughts are so powerful, the individual feels robbed of personal freedom. He or she is no longer at liberty to exercise basic choices—even the most basic choice of all: what to think about. It is easy to see why many medieval scholars concluded that obsessional thinking was a symptom of possession.

. . . routinely invest chance experiences with special significance.

‘Do I look OK?’, ’Should I have said that?’, ‘What did he mean?’, ‘Am I rushing things?’, ’Should I text her?’, ‘Does he know how I feel?’ . . .

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, or morphine, or idealism. —Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflection

Addicts find that they are taking drugs not to feel good, but simply to stop feeling bad.

The word ‘chocolate’ has an ancient provenance, being derived from the Aztec chocolatl, meaning ‘food of the gods’. Only the Aztec aristocracy—who would drink it from goblets of gold and eat it with spoons of tortoiseshell—were permitted to consume chocolate, which they also considered to be an aphrodisiac.

. . . delaying the flow of time and making the world more sensual.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was loaned to me by a friend. I told her that most people mistake sensationalism for genuine affection. Thus started a debate in which I was (jokingly) accused of being severe. (Me? Ha- rumph!) I claimed that losing your head to reason; being selfish in your pursuit of pleasure; engaging in high-risk behavior; and alienating everyone with goopy melodrama does not make a person a romantic; it makes them troubled. IMHO, such behaviors are self-indulgent and damaging. Yet our culture consistently identifies them as proofs of love. Fiddlesticks. This does not mean that genuine, healthy romance is devoid of sensibility. One can be romantic without needing psychiatric counseling -- if your heart quietly flutters when a special person enters the room because they matter to you, then you are romantic. You can still pay your bills at the end of the month and show up for work on time. Love can be as painful as it is passionate and sweet, but I don’t think it’s supposed to make you genuinely crazy. If it does then it’s misguided or misdirected. Love sickness has more to do with things like codependency than with truly caring about another person’s happiness. My friend tells me that I don’t understand the meaning of true, all-encompassing love. Hmm…

I read this book in one sitting, as I was home for the day. It was a fun distraction from sneezing. Tallis approaches the subject of love/desire/jealousy/companionship very well by drawing on both the liberal arts and sciences in occidental cultures. He takes a historical approach to how romantic love (as opposed to filial or familial love) has been defined throughout the ages. The author is mostly balanced in his presentation of the material. There is some fascinating information on how “love sickness” can mimic OCD behavior. Data presented on the chemicals released into the bloodstream as a result of falling in/out of love doesn’t violate any of my romantic notions. Human beings are a jumble of chemicals, and this applies to everything we do. I was particularly entertained by the author’s account of Freud’s love life. Freud’s out of favor these days, but he was deep thinker and his experiences are interesting. If anything, I think this book confirms my take on romantic love. Only near the end of the book do I see Tallis taking sides. He defines behaviors that tend to sustain long-term, loving relationships and compares them to behaviors that are more sensational, but fleeting. Tallis is probably a bit of a romantic.

[Adam Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love can be painful and can go wrong. Incurable Romantic consists of a number of case studies where the sexual and romantic areas of life have soured or gone wrong in some way; there is demonic possession, relentless obsession and the odd case of depression.

Mixed in with the case studies are personal anecdotes and general explorations into different areas of psychoanalytical history - even some areas that are a little dodgy like Wilhelm Reich and his orgone accumulators.

The book says is contains ‘unsettling revelations’ and I would say that it fulfils that description, one of the big themes of the book is how easily love and sex can lead the psyche into areas that aren’t very helpful, that falling in love is many ways the most common brush with madness. It also stresses how important it can for a meaningful life to fall in love. There is also a lot about conflicts inherent in our more animal and rational natures, that we are in our very natures divided beings when it comes to love, sex and romance.

One of the most interesting and unsettling elements of the book was how it differed from other psychological books I have read - none of the case studies in the book have clear, happy ends. The book is not a chance for Tallis to crow about his successes, even the possible happy endings are only beginning, places to begin healing. It was also interesting how the whole realm of the mind, from the biological, chemical, genetic, behavioural..&c approaches can do little more than creep towards a person’s a problem and possible solution. What we know about human consciousness seems like a mish-mashed and hotch-potched collections of bits of theories and any of them are relevant if they allow a practitioner and patient to crawl towards a solution.

I found this book fascinating and well written and would like to return to it at some point and see if I can use its insights in my writing.

[Rose B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Frank Tallis help us make some sense of this crazy thing called love from an evolutionary and scientific point of view. The symptoms a person displays when in love, he argues, are remarkably similar to being mentally ill. Melancholy, sleeplessness, preoccupation with the beloved, daydreaming, obsession, jealousy, seeing the other person as perfect are some of the characteristics we all have experienced at some point in our lives. This necessary madness, however, is the one thing that ensures the transmission of our genes into subsequent generations. In other words, if you want for the human race to survive, love is absolutely necessary.
He does a wonderful job explaining all the little details that go into the act of falling in love, from physical attraction being the first step to science’s useless-and dangerous-attempt to find a cure for it.
If you have ever wondered why it happened to you, what is the meaning of all this nonsense, or simply want to delve into your emotions, this is the book for you. It might make you feel better to know that even rational thinkers like Leo Tolstoy and Sigmund Freud fell prey to the evolutionary demon of jealousy.

[Cameron Macdonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book that views love as an emotional endeavour that at times has the lover act irrationally. The book focuses on romantic love which most modern books on love do suggesting love is different for romantic lovers than for other lovers. This is mostly down to the fact that falling in love is considered a part of love rather than being or staying in love by Tallis.

[Nikki Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book slyly talks about the merits of madness in a way that is quite hard to argue with. I really enjoyed reading about the various aspects of love and madness that are addressed.

[Soroush Haghi · Rating 3 out of 5]

این کتاب مناسب فعالان در زمینه سلامت روان است.

[Maria Morozova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ещё одна книга на тему любовного безумия от Фрэнка Тэллиса. Если первая была a page-turner (Неизлечимые Романтики), то эта тестирует твою возможность концентрироваться и выдерживать отступления к древним историческим фактам. И всё же - в ней тоже нашлось много чего любопытного.
Вкратце, что подразумевается под любовным безумием. Это то, о чём поют в 90% песнях - "я за тебя умру", "baby be mine", ''I just died in your arms tonight" и миллионе других. Это любовь с первого взгляда, навязчивые мысли об объекте желания, преследования, насилие на почве ревности, одержимость, слияние, сильный синдром отмены когда партнёр уходит.
Любовь представляется автором с эволюционной точки зрения - она помогает нам передать наши гены следующим поколениям. Согласно эволюционному подходу, страсная любовь рассчитана на время, которое требовалось нашим первобытным предкам на то, чтобы создать пару и вырастить детёныша. Отсюда, вероятно, и мысль о "любовь живёт три года".
Страсной любви противопоставляется дружеская, которая с гораздо большей вероятностью продлится дольше. Дружба в основе любви защищает от увядания красоты. Когда красота блекнет, мы можем видеть сквозь морщины на лице любимого человека качества, за которые мы его полюбили. Доброта, хороший нрав, манера говорить, что угодно.

Интересно было почитать про высокую выработку окситоцина при сексуальной близости. И вообще, о том что любовь это химия в голове. И здесь есть опасность вступить в союз не с тем человеком будучи просто high on love - то есть на гормонах. Химия в мозге может затуманить взор, и мы рискуем влюбиться в свою "фантазию", если не дадим себе шанс постепенно узнавать разные стороны партнёра. Ведь когда гормоны упадут, есть риск проснуться в постели с незнакомым тебе человеком. А вы уже, не дай Бог, связаны собакой :)

В общем и целом, стиль автора очень приятный. Тяжело читать исторические отступления. Эволюционный подход можно кое-где и покритиковать. Но в общем, занимательная книга.

[Stefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid take on considering love through a prism of psychological disturbances (obsessions, delusions, anxieties, addictions, etc), drawing heavily on literature, mostly English (Burton, Byron, Darwin, Hume, Mann, Shakespeare, etc) and romantics (Stendhal, Goethe), but ventures into Tolstoy or Dostoyevski, Avicenna (Ibn Sina), covers Plato, Hippocrates, Lara Croft and even Dalai Lama views on love. As for a work of 2004 it's strangely based on pre-2000 research and (I assume) therapeutical practices. Would be nice to see an updated edition taking on account recent anthropological revelations in the domain and/or bringing in ex-European points of views. Definitely worth reading, doubly so if you are still in school tackling one of these essays on the nature of love and desire.

[Maddie · Rating 2 out of 5]

What I appreciate about this book is that it offers a challenge to the narrative that love is an ideal state to be in. But everything else about the book reads like a disorganized (and a bit misogynistic) mess. The author continues to glorify really tragic situations and mental health issues without truly offering any insight or empathy for the situation. The expansion on the concept of ertomania, the history of love within media, the comparison of love to manic depression, and the comparison of love to OCD were the only real fascinating parts of the book. The information is clearly outdated and doesn't hold up well with modern understanding of psychology or love while also being presented in an absolute slog of a writing style. There are better books out there about love.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating, accessible and entertaining guide to 'love', looking at its evolutionary roots, history and purpose. Tallis had a very engaging writing style, and the book is packed with engaging insights and fun facts. I didn't quite buy into the central premise of the book, namely that love may be a mental illness, but this was a fantastic read nonetheless.

[Cal Davie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read, Tallis tracks how love as mental illness has been conceived over the last few thousand years. He discusses how love can cause one to lose their senses exhibiting depression, mania and even psychotic belief. Love sickness is little discussed in modern psychiatry, and it is interesting how it might impact how we understand the social factors in mental illness.

[Jo-jean Keller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't agree with everything Tallis says but he challenged my thought processes!

[Christen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend to anyone dating.

[Jayasri Srinivasan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant analysis! Insightful, wise and compassionate.
Worth reading many times over.

[Eve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literature meets history meets evolutionary psych, what more could you ask for??

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative popular psychology book trying to identify what love is, how it has emerged and the role it plays in the evolution of the human species. Turns out that love is a chemical construct that arose out of evolutionary necessity (the need to establish a strong bond between the mother and the father in order to allow the human child to survive infancy - for a finite amount of time), developed as a chemical bond between mother and infant allowing for the propagation of the species.
Love is also traced through its different historical incarnations from the earliest Arabic tradition to the medieval troubadours to the Romantics to the modern world and examined as a manifestation that has more in common with recognised mental illnesses: disorder, addiction, depression, OCD, hallucination.
The book has a positive message in that is helps us to recognise the negative and damaging symptoms of 'love' for what they are and avert the pitfalls in as much as possible and form healthier attachments that bypass the stages of the 'love-ilness'.
A book to come back to, but similarly to the start of a diet when you are reading a diet book on a full stomach, this book is perfectly lucid if, at the time of reading, one is not caught in one of the stages of the unhealthy 'love' cycle.

"The idea of loving sanely might, at first sight, seem rather pedestrian. Yet, those who enjoy the benefits of a secure attachment are truly liberated. They can divest themselves of the hopeless, confused, deluded and insecure posturing that characterises 'romance', and replace it with something of far greater value: true love - an elusive but many splendoured thing.'

[Tim Petersik · Rating 4 out of 5]

To the best of my knowledge, Tallis was the first to show detailed relationships between the criteria we use to diagnose mental illness and the symptoms of those who are "love sick." It's not a particularly well-written book, but it's fun to consider the overlap between conditions we consider normal, but extreme (e.g., love sickness), and those we think of as psychopathology.

[Siavash habibi · Rating 5 out of 5]

kheili jalebe!

[Bridgett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't view love as a mental illness, though it's sometimes seemed that way to me because I'm so emotional, but there is a lot of interesting analysis in this book.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life changingly good

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining read! :) love it.

[Sarah-Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful but I wish there was a bit more on how to love "sanely". One to own I think and revisit over the years.

[Nkaempfer · Rating 5 out of 5]

how loves madness has been perceived by various civilisations.

[Cuddly Cactus-Dawn]

Interesting book indeed! For anyone who has even been in love, this is a must read!