Lovestruck
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Beinglovestruckmeans having mental and physical symptoms associated withfalling in love:"Love-struck... means to be hit by love... you are hit in your heart by the emotion of love".[1]
While being lovestruck has historically been viewed as a short-livedmental illnessbrought on by the intense changes associated withromantic love,this view has been out of favor since thehumoral modelwas abandoned, and since the advent of modern scientificpsychiatry.
Metaphors
[edit]The concept is associated with a set of metaphors attempting to convey the speed and intensity of falling in love by describing it as a physical process of falling or being struck.
Alternately, falling in love is often described with reference toCupid's arrow. Other sources, such asTristram Shandy,describe the process by referring to it as the act of being shot with a gun: "I am in love with Mrs Wadman, quoth my uncle Toby – She has left a ball here – added my uncle Toby – pointing to his breast".[2]
Psychoanalysis
[edit]The twentieth-century saw the concept of love-sickness reconceptualised bypsychoanalysis.As early as 1915,Freudasked rhetorically, "Isn't what we mean by 'falling in love' a kind of sickness and craziness, an illusion, a blindness to what the loved person is really like?"[3]Half a century later, in 1971,Hans Loewaldtook up the theme, comparing being in analysis "to the passions and conflicts stirred up anew in the state of being in love which, from the point of view of the ordinary order and emotional tenor and discipline of life, feels like an illness, with all its deliciousness and pain".[4]
Symptoms
[edit]A 2005 article byFrank Tallissuggested that being utterly romantically lovestruck should be taken more seriously by professionals.[5]
"For love-struck victims, the world appears altered. Replacing the flatness of ordinary experience is a fullness".[6]
According to Tallis, some of the symptom clusters shared with being lovestruck include:
- Euphoria,that is, abnormally elevated mood, inflated self-esteem, extravagant gift giving
- Tearfulness
- Loss of concentrationanddifficulty sleeping
- Lack of appetite
- Stress–high blood pressure,pain in chest and heart, acuteinsomnia;sometimes brought on by a "crush"
- Obsessive–compulsive disorder– Preoccupation and hoarding valueless but superstitiously resonant items
- Psychologically created physical symptoms,such asupset stomach,change inappetite,insomnia,dizziness,andconfusion.
More substantively, the estimatedserotoninlevels of people falling in love were observed to drop to levels found in patients with OCD.[7]Brain-scan investigations of individuals who professed to be "truly, madly, deeply" in love showed activity in several structures in common with theneuroanatomyofobsessive–compulsive disorder(OCD), for example, theanterior cingulate cortexandcaudate nucleus.[8]
Criticism
[edit]Some who would "disagree with Frank Tallis's fundamental thesis that love should be seen as a mental illness... concur that at the extreme and under certain circumstances love sickness can drive a person to despair".[9]
They would suggest however that "'disordered love'... can be understood more clearly in terms ofattachment theory".[10]
Literary examples
[edit]- The character ofRomeofits the archetype of a lovestruck youth that he has become the very model ofCupidhimself.[11]
- InPossession,the hero's ex quotesRobert Gravesto her new lover: "Oh Love, be fed by apples while you may",[12]echoing theSong of Solomon:"comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love".[13]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^Jennifer Overton,Snapshots of Autism(2003) p. 58.
- ^Laurence Sterne,Tristram Shandy(Penguin 1976) p. 554.
- ^Janet Malcolm,Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession(1988) p. 9.
- ^Quoted in Malcolm, p. 127.
- ^Tallis, F. (2005)."Truly, madly deeply in love".The Psychologist.18(2): 72–74.
- ^Kathryn Allen Rabuzzi,Mother with Child(1994) p. 117.
- ^Marazziti D.; Akiskal H. S.; Rossi A.; Cassano G. B. (May 1999). "Alteration of the platelet serotonin transporter in romantic love".Psychol. Med.29(3): 741–745.doi:10.1017/S0033291798007946.PMID10405096.S2CID12630172.
- ^Bartels A.; Zeki S. (November 2000)."The neural basis of romantic love".NeuroReport.11(17): 3829–3834.doi:10.1097/00001756-200011270-00046.PMID11117499.S2CID1448875.
- ^M. J. Power, T. Dalgleish,Cognition and Emotion(2008) p. 342.
- ^Power, Dalgleish, p. 351.
- ^Clayton G. MacKenzie,Emblems of Mortality(2000) p. 75.
- ^A. S. Byatt,Possession(1990) p. 417.
- ^J. M. & M. J. Cohen eds.,The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations(1964) p. 42.
Further reading
[edit]- Frank Tallis,Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness(2005)