Latent fire -- Diagnosing love -- A necessary madness -- Incurable romantics -- Hallucinating beauty -- Obsession --Too close for comfort -- The green ey'd monster -- Addicted to love -- What becomes of the broken-hearted --A many-splendored thing.

An explanation 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 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 be in fact be more sane, less tortured ways to love.--From publisher description.