Love sick : love as a mental illness / Frank Tallis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tallis, Frank.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Love.

Compulsive behavior.

Psychoanalysis.

Relationship addiction.

Physical Description:

xiii, 318 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First U.S. edition.

Other Title:

Love as a mental illness

Place of Publication:

New York : Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005.

Summary:

Obsessive thoughts, erratic mood swings, insomnia, loss of appetite, recurrent images, weird impulses, superstitious compulsions, delusions, an 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 welcome these symptoms when we allow ourselves to fall in love.

In Love Sick, Dr. Frank Tallis considers our 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 and questions just how healthy our attitudes are. May there in fact be more sane, less tortured ways to love?

Contents:

Preface: A Preliminary Observation ix

1 Latent Fire 1

2 Diagnosing Love 31

3 A Necessary Madness 60

4 Incurable Romantics 87

5 Hallucinating Beauty 118

6 Obsession 148

7 Too Close for Comfort 177

8 The Green-ey'd Monster 192

9 Addicted to Love 215

10 What Becomes of the Broken-hearted? 237

11 A Many-splendored Thing 257

A Brief Note on Language and Sexual Orientation 289.

Notes:

Reprint. Originally published: London : Century, 2004.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-304) and index.

ISBN:

1560256478

OCLC:

57309969