The Incurable Romantic: And Other Tales of Madness and Desire

British clinical psychologist Frank Tallis (Lovesick: Love as a Mental Illness) explores the intersection between love and mental health with a compassionate look at some of the most challenging and interesting cases of his career.
 
In an instant, a meek, conventional woman becomes passionately obsessed with her dentist, and no power on earth can convince her that he does not reciprocate her feelings of almost spiritual connection. A wealthy married man spends his fortune romancing more than 3,000 prostitutes, then jilting them once they fall for him. An elderly widow misses her husband's presence so strongly that she begins to hallucinate his ghost. A man who visits prostitutes insists a demon possesses him and causes his behavior. Over the course of Tallis's career, he watches love change and even destroy lives, often in ways that might make little sense to the casual observer. He also includes episodes from his own life, such as the time he and his ex-wife lived in a rural village where a neighbor ran afoul of a messianic evangelist suffering psychotic delusions.
 
Although his material could easily lend itself to a more gossipy treatment, Tallis treats each story with the utmost seriousness, by turns empathetic toward his former patients and fascinated by the conditions and obsessions that plague them. Though entertaining and written with wry good humor, The Incurable Romantic digs deeply into the emotion of each situation and makes a case that a human experience as powerful as love can carry deep consequences. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
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