The Incurable Romantic
and Other Unsettling Revelations
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
'Frank Tallis brings a lifetime's clinical experience and wise reflection to a condition that, by its own strange routes, leads us into the very heart of love itself. This is a brilliant, compelling book' Ian McEwan
Love is a great leveller. Everyone wants love, everyone falls in love, everyone loses love, and everyone knows something of love's madness. But the experience of obsessive love is no trivial matter. In the course of his career psychologist Dr Frank Tallis has treated many unusual patients, whose stories have lessons for all of us.
A barristers' clerk becomes convinced that her dentist has fallen in love with her and they are destined to be together for eternity; a widow is visited by the ghost of her dead husband; an academic is besotted with his own reflection; a beautiful woman searches jealously for a rival who isn't there; and a night porter is possessed by a lascivious demon. These are just some of the people whom we meet in an extraordinary and original book that explores the conditions of longing and desire - true accounts of psychotherapy that take the reader on a journey through the darker realms of the amorous mind.
Drawing on the latest scientific research into the biological and psychological mechanisms underlying romance and emotional attachment, The Incurable Romantic demonstrates that ultimately love dissolves the divide between what we judge to be normal and abnormal.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This thoughtful study from British psychologist and mystery novelist Tallis (Mephisto Waltz) comprises 11 tales from his own practice touching on a single theme: people who "have experienced significant distress attributable to falling in love or being in love." He posits this as a neglected field in modern psychology. Tallis recalls that during the eight years he spent studying to become a clinical psychologist, only one hour was devoted to the subject, though love, which often involves delusions and obsessions, can sometimes seem a form of psychopathology. Perhaps the tales that best illustrate this are those of a married woman infatuated with her oral surgeon and convinced, against all evidence, that he reciprocates; of a successful businessman who approaches bankruptcy because of his hypersexuality (he estimates that he has been involved with 3,000 prostitutes); and of a guilt-ridden pedophile who struggles mightily to resist his attraction to the young daughter of a friend. Tallis has a graceful narrative style, easily incorporating brief digressions on deeper philosophical issues such as free will versus determinism. Most importantly, his book is suffused with compassion, avoiding facile categorization and struggling to understand and empathize with his patients as people in pain, often anguish, because of the love they feel.
