On Love

According to Freud, falling in love is best thought of as a short acting, spontaneously remitting psychosis. A psychosis no less!

He also observed that falling in love is frequently accompanied by a variety of symptoms which, clinically stated, sounds like the characteristics of a disorder. A psychosis and a disorder!! Evidence? Well how about changes in mood, physical restlessness, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, disturbance of work patterns, ruminative thinking, and delusional beliefs about a person which do not correspond to others’ perception of reality?

“The exaggerated sense of well being produced by a state of love means all might not portend well in the long run if this state is used as the basis for long term decision making – like the choice of a life partner. The divorce statistics alone indicate that love is an unreliable basis for making choices, let alone the countless occasions when detached observers consider a match unlikely or ill-advised.” (…extracted from a book titled “From the edge of the Couch” by Dr Raj Persaud which I am currently reading…)

At the risk of sounding like a Vulcan from the Star Trek franchise, this is an example of how clinging to emotions do us in and it is also an argument for the primacy of logic to rule our everyday lives.