The Incurable Romantic: and Other Unsettling Revelations

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 defines us. It shapes the individual, ensures the preservation of the species, and is the principal subject we - as a culture - choose to examine in our art forms. The experience of being in love is powerful and it inevitably changes how we feel and how we behave. Even when love is normal it is so intense that for thousands of years doctors and poets have described love as a kind of madness; however, love can also go wrong. When this happens the consequences for the individual and those around them can be far reaching and in some instances truly astonishing. Lovesickness is not a trivial matter. Unrequited love is a frequent cause of suicide (particularly among the young) and over ten percent of murders are connected with sexual jealousy. In the course of his career, Frank Tallis has treated many fascinating patients, and their stories, told here, are dramatic, bizarre and revealing. From flagship NHS hospitals to luxury apartments, as well as notorious council estates Tallis has treated aristocrats, billionaires, film stars, middle managers and people in unspeakable poverty. The jilted Lord is just as vulnerable to the maladies of love as the jilted bus driver. Love is a great leveller. Everyone wants love, everyone falls in love, everyone loses love, and everyone knows something of love's madness. And when love goes wrong, wealth, education and status count for nothing. In this astonishing, honest book, we learn of love's myriad maladies, and witness first-hand the ways they can drive us to madness.

Dr Frank Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist. He has held lecturing posts in clinical psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry and neuroscience at King's College London. He has published over 30 scientific papers in international journals and has written a textbook on cognitive and neuropsychological aspects of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He has written three works of psychology for the lay reader: Changing Minds (a history of psychotherapy), Hidden Minds (a history of the unconscious) and Lovesick (an exploration of the relationship between romantic love and mental illness).

I have enjoyed The Incurable Romantic, in which psychotherapist Frank Tallis opens his casebook. There have been quite a few such books recently, most of them overpraised and not as well written as their admirers claim. But Tallis writes with clarity and wit about the morbid condition of love, which emerges here as a kind of mental disorder . . . riveting stuff -- Sebastian Faulks * Guardian * A hugely entertaining, informative and often disturbing look at love in some of its strangest forms. Can't recommend it enough -- Mark Billingham Compelling -- Susie Orbach Fascinating and beautifully written -- Brett Anderson 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 Thoughtful . . . 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 * Publishers Weekly * A gifted storyteller . . . Tallis's characters remain sharply, painfully real, their stories as inconclusive, messy and fascinating as life * The Economist * It is utterly compelling: the details, the dialogue, which bring each character, however heavily disguised, leaping off the page. Tallis's years of close observation might not always have solved his patients' problems . . . but they have helped turn him into a fine writer . . . He knows how to tell a story. Boy, does he know how to tell a story. This powerful and moving book is not just about individual cases. It's also about what the human animal needs . . . They are certainly enough here to create something that feels profoundly truthful. Something that feels, in fact, like an act of love -- Christina Patterson * Sunday Times * [Tallis is] a brilliant raconteur with an acute ear for dialogue and sleuth-like capabilities. Only someone who has never felt sick falling head over heels, suffered the agonising pangs of jealousy, battled bestial fogs of lust or wallowed in the delirious happiness of being entwined with the object of their love could fail to be fascinated * Evening Standard * Will interest anyone who wants to know what makes people tick . . . The Incurable Romantic earns its place in the fine tradition of popular psychoanalytic writing . . . an amiable and acute guide to the madness of love * The Times * This fascinating memoir peers deep into the dark heart of love * Herald * Frank, informative and often bleakly funny -- Helen Brown * Telegraph * Tallis's book reminded me of Do No Harm by the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh . . . Through these cases Tallis makes a strong case that "love" can be the cause of great distress in many ways. He intersperses the cases with observations from history, literature, and scientific reports, making for an enjoyable, entertaining, and informative read -- Richard Smith * British Medical Journal Opinion * Tallis's book is about what happens when these perfectly ordinary feelings become warped, excessive, and unmanageable in some of his patients, and as you can imagine, it's pretty gripping . . . The great thing about The Incurable Romantic is that it makes you feel better about yourself. Whether you're happily or unhappily married, happily or unhappily single, involved in an adulterous relationship with another person or even several other people, you're doing better than these guys -- Nick Hornby Outstanding * Strong Words * Eye-opening stories of lovesickness, rampant sex, and obsessions with inappropriate partners * Guardian * Like a 70s Woody Allen movie, hilarious and tragic - strangely compelling * Libreria London * Astute, self-deprecating and funny -- Jane O'Grady * Literary Review * Frank Tallis draws his characters with such wit and skill that at times it reminded me of novels such as The Collector or Enduring Love -- Brett Anderson * Guardian * His case studies are fascinating -- Michelle Paver