Being lovestruck means having mental and physical symptoms associated with falling in love: "Love-struck ... means to be hit by love ... you are hit in your heart by the emotion of love". While being lovestruck has historically been viewed as a short-lived

mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...

brought on by the intense changes associated with romantic love, this view has been out of favor since the humoral model was abandoned, and since the advent of modern scientific psychiatry.

Metaphors

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 to

Cupid In classical mythology, Cupid (Latin Cupīdō , meaning "passionate desire") is the god of desire, lust, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus (mythology), Venus and the god of war Mar ...

's arrow. Other sources, such as '' Tristram 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".

Psychoanalysis

The twentieth-century saw the concept of love-sickness reconceptualised by psychoanalysis. As early as 1915,

Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in ...

asked 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?" Half a century later, in 1971,

Hans Loewald Hans Loewald (1906–1993) was a German-American psychoanalyst and theorist. While apparently a traditional Freudian, Loewald in his thinking is both elegant and quietly revisionist - a radical conservatist. Background and education Loewald was b ...

took 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".

Symptoms

A 2005 article by

Frank Tallis Frank Tallis (born 1 September 1958) is an English author and clinical psychologist, whose area of expertise is obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). He has written crime novels, including the collection of novels known as the ''Liebermann Pape ...

suggested that being utterly romantically lovestruck should be taken more seriously by professionals. "For love-struck victims, the world appears altered. Replacing the flatness of ordinary experience is a fullness". According to Tallis, some of the symptom clusters shared with being lovestruck include: *

Euphoria Euphoria ( ) is the experience (or affect) of pleasure or excitement and intense feelings of well-being and happiness. Certain natural rewards and social activities, such as aerobic exercise, laughter, listening to or making music and da ...

, that is, abnormally elevated mood, inflated self-esteem, extravagant gift giving * Tearfulness * Loss of concentration and

difficulty sleeping Insomnia, also known as sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder in which people have trouble sleeping. They may have difficulty falling asleep, or staying asleep as long as desired. Insomnia is typically followed by daytime sleepiness, low energy, ...

* Lack of appetite * Stress

high blood pressure Hypertension (HTN or HT), also known as high blood pressure (HBP), is a long-term medical condition in which the blood pressure in the arteries is persistently elevated. High blood pressure usually does not cause symptoms. Long-term high bl ...

, pain in chest and heart, acute insomnia; sometimes brought on by a " crush" * Obsessive–compulsive disorder Preoccupation and hoarding valueless but superstitiously resonant items * Psychologically created physical symptoms, such as upset stomach, change in

appetite Appetite is the desire to eat food items, usually due to hunger. Appealing foods can stimulate appetite even when hunger is absent, although appetite can be greatly reduced by satiety. Appetite exists in all higher life-forms, and serves to regu ...

, insomnia, dizziness, and confusion. More substantively, the estimated

serotonin Serotonin () or 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) is a monoamine neurotransmitter. Its biological function is complex and multifaceted, modulating mood, cognition, reward, learning, memory, and numerous physiological processes such as vomiting and vas ...

levels of people falling in love were observed to drop to levels found in patients with OCD. Brain-scan investigations of individuals who professed to be "truly, madly, deeply" in love showed activity in several structures in common with the neuroanatomy of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), for example, the anterior cingulate cortex and caudate nucleus.

Criticism

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". They would suggest however that "'disordered love' ... can be understood more clearly in terms of attachment theory".

Literary examples

* The character of Romeo fits the archetype of a lovestruck youth that he has become the very model of

himself. * In ''Possession'', the hero's ex quotes

Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celtic ...

to her new lover: "Oh Love, be fed by apples while you may", echoing the Song of Solomon: "comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love".J. M. & M. J. Cohen eds., ''The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations '' (1964) p. 42.

Metaphors

Psychoanalysis

Symptoms

Criticism

Literary examples

See also

References

Further reading