On Romantic Love: Simple Truths about a Complex Emotion [Paperback]

Romantic love presents some of life's most challenging questions. Can we choose who to love? Is romantic love rational? Can we love more than one person at a time? And can we make ourselves fall out of love? Berit Brogaard here attempts to get to the bottom of love's many contradictions. This short book, informed by both historical and cutting edge philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, combines a new theory of romantic love with entertaining anecdotes from real life and accessible explanations of the neuroscience underlying our wildest passions. Against the grain, Brogaard argues that love is an emotion; that it can be, at turns, both rational and irrational; and that it can be manifested in degrees. We can love one person more than another and we can love a person a little or a lot or not at all. And love isn't even always something we consciously feel. However, love -- like other emotions, both conscious and not -- is subject to rational control, and falling in or out of it can be a deliberate choice. This engaging and innovative look at a universal topic, featuring original line drawings by illustrator Gareth Southwell, illuminates the processes behind heartbreak, obsession, jealousy, attachment, and more.

Preface

Chapter 1: Letter from a Friend

Chapter 2: The Chemistry of Love
Your Brain on Crack
Beliefs and Brain Chemistry
Taking the Drug Away
Addicted to Grief
Emotional Pain
Stress, Pimples and Gray Hair
Love and Hate

Chapter 3: The Philosophy of Love
Love as an Emotion
Basic and Complex Emotions
The James-Lange Theory
The Conjunctive Theory of Emotions
The Connection Problem
The Problem of Emotional Responses to Fiction
The Perceived-Response Theory

Chapter 4: Irrational Love
Does the Idea of Irrational Love Make Sense?
You Call It Madness, I Call It Love
Irrational Compassionate Love
Love lƒ7