Lovesickness

Lovesickness is the mental state brought on by the personal experience of unrequited love, or unrequited limerence (also known as infatuated love or being smitten). Research on the biology of romantic love indicates that the early stage of intense romantic love (also called passionate love) resembles addiction, but academics do not currently agree on how love addiction is defined. Lovesickness is characterized by addictive cravings, depression and intrusive thoughts about a love object. New research is emerging on the impact of heartbreak on the body and mind. The term "lovesickness" is rarely used in modern medicine.

History

Love has been described as an illness for as long as it has been written about—as a subject of poetry, but also a comparison the medical profession accepted for over a thousand years. Lovesickness was considered a legitimate diagnosis among doctors from the time of Galen, until around the 18th and 19th centuries. Galen was a doctor of Greek origin, associated with ancient Rome, when lovesickness began to receive the attention of doctors. Galen was a follower of the Hippocratic system of medicine (humorism), and proposed that the symptoms of lovesickness were attributable to a humoral imbalance caused by the influence of strong passion, rather than divine intervention. Hippocratic writings had also challenged the view that other mental ailments such as epilepsy had supernatural causes. "Love melancholia" is an almost inevitable result of passionate love according to Hippocratic principles. Physicians of ancient Greece and Rome whose writings survive interpret lovesickness as a depressive illness, characterized by sadness, insomnia, despondency, dejection, physical debility, and blinking. A similarity to depressive melancholia is discussed; however, rather than having a physical cause like melancholia, lovesickness was viewed as either a kind of psychological disturbance best cured by intercourse, or as an illness, but not caused by an excess of black bile. In one historical case, the Greek physician Erasistratus was called by King Seleucus of Syria to diagnose the illness of his son, Prince Antiochus. Erasistratus observed Antiochus' symptoms when different women entered the room, and upon discovering that Antiochus' illness was in fact his lovesickness for the king's wife Stratonice (Antiochus' stepmother), Erasistratus recommended to Seleucus that he give up his wife to save his son, believing this would cure him. The king obliged, and later Antiochus and Stratonice were wed. In the Middle Ages, unrequited love was considered "a trauma which, for the medieval melancholic, was difficult to relieve." Treatments included light therapy, rest, exposure to nature, and a diet of lamb, lettuce, fish, eggs, and ripe fruit.

In both antiquity and the Middle Ages, lovesickness was often explained by an imbalance in the humors. An excess of black bile, the humor correlated with melancholy, was usually considered the cause. Ancient and classical authors emphasized the physical manifestations of love more so than the psychological. Lovesickness as a diagnosis fell out of popularity among doctors around the 18th and 19th centuries, due to the decline of Hippocratic principles and humorism in medicine. This shift required a new explanation for the symptoms of lovesickness, which instead became attributed to having "too much sensibility" (a term used for emotional sensitivity). In 1915, Sigmund Freud 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 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".

Modern interpretation Scientific study on the topic of lovesickness has found that those in love experience a kind of high similar to that caused by illicit drugs such as cocaine. In the brain, certain neurotransmitters — dopamine, norepinephrine and oxytocin — elicit the feeling of high from "love" or "falling in love" using twelve different regions of the brain. These neurotransmitters mimic the feeling of amphetamines. On average, a psychologist does not get referrals from general practitioners mentioning "lovesickness", although this can be prevalent through the language of what the patient feels. With the common symptoms of lovesickness being related to other mental diseases, it is often misdiagnosed or it is found that with all the illnesses one could be facing, love is the underlying problem. This is dangerous when one does not seek help or cannot cope because love has been known to be fatal (a consequence of which might be attempted suicide, thus dramatising the ancient contention that love can be fatal). In his book The Social Nature of Mental Illness, Len Bowers postulates that although physiological differences exist in the brains of those that are deemed "mentally ill", there are several other criteria that must be met before the differences can be called a malfunction. It is possible, therefore, that many mental illnesses (such as lovesickness) will never bear strong enough evidence to clinically warrant "legitimate" affliction by clinical standards without further correspondingly parasympathetic criteria of established dysfunction(s). Frank Tallis, a clinical psychologist, suggests in his 2005 article that lovesickness occurs when one is "truly, madly, deeply" in love and should be taken more seriously by medical professionals. Tallis includes a list of common symptoms of lovesickness in the following:

Mania - an abnormally elevated mood or inflated self-esteem Depression, hopelessness, or helplessness Nausea Tearfulness Insomnia, which may lead to fatigue Lack of concentration Loss of appetite or overeating Stress Obsessive-compulsive disorder - preoccupation and hoarding valueless but superstitiously resonant items Dizziness and confusion Body tremors, intrusive thoughts, or frequent flashbacks Mood swings According to Tallis, many symptoms of lovesickness can be categorized under the DSM-IV and the ICD-10. Lovesickness resembles obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), because it includes a preoccupation.

Scientific research

In the arts

The depressed and physically ill lover is more of a cliché of modern and medieval literature, although it is present in more ancient writings. In ancient literature, frustrated love more often manifested itself in violent and manic behavior rather than love melancholy. In ancient Greece, Euripides' play Medea portrays Medea's descent into "violence and mania" as a result of her lovesickness for Jason; meanwhile, in ancient Rome, Virgil's Dido has a manic reaction to the betrayal of her lover, Aeneas, and commits suicide. Dido's case is especially interesting, as the cause of her lovesickness is attributed to the meddling of the gods Juno and Venus. William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet portrays the true madness of "love" and the grief that the two young, infatuated lovers feel. When Romeo finds his love dead (or so he believes), with the thought of living without his "true love", the grief and depression overcomes him and he takes his own life. After waking and seeing his dead body, Juliet is overcome with despair and takes her own life. Gothic metal songs thematize lovesickness from Medieval literary influences. "This emotional and physical distress is a key element of fin'amor that echoes into Gothic metal", according to The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism. "In particular, lovesickness was associated with desires and passions that remained unfulfilled, resulting in symptoms such as sleeplessness, sighing, and loss of appetite, all of which were considered manifestations of the mind's efforts to restrain its passions."

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