An exploration of how the symptoms of mental illness have been used to describe the state of being in love. 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 a few of these symptoms is enough to merit a diagnosis of a depressive episode. Yet we all subconsciously welcome them when we allow ourselves to fall in love. Tallis, an authority on obsessive disorders, considers 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, and questions just how healthy our attitudes are and whether there may infact be more sane, less tortured ways to love. --From publisher description.
