Lovesickness
Lovesickness (outdated: Herzeleid ) colloquially describes the emotional reaction to unfulfilled or lost love . In the vernacular it is also called Cracked heart .
Although this generally refers to psychological processes, physical symptoms can also occur, including the so-called broken heart syndrome , which can result in life-threatening functional disorders of the heart muscle.
Almost all people once or more suffer in their life heartache. This is usually harmless, but depending on your personality, it can also lead to serious physical or mental illness , suicide or murder . In psychiatry , lovesickness is less likely to be noticed (compare, for example, relationship delusion or relationship addiction ).
Causes and consequences
Lovesickness often arises from the loss or separation of people who have been emotionally attached . Another form of lovesickness is longing or jealousy for a woman or a man with whom you have fallen in love despite an existing partnership. Even with unrequited love and in cases in which there is no bond between people, but this is desired by at least one of the people concerned, it can lead to heartache. An example of this would be that a person who is in love but who is shy does not dare to speak to the other person. The resulting grief can cause psychological damage. These can lead to stalking , for example , and require treatment or therapy .
Lovesickness can also be caused by a child's unfulfilled love for their parents or siblings.
As a result of lovesickness, the rational action of a person is often switched off, he tends to - for outsiders incomprehensible - behavior such as total surrender , self- surrender and willingness to make sacrifices, or even violence. How realistic the connection that someone with lovesickness strives for with the person they love can be irrelevant, because this form of grief - like love itself - can completely ignore educational and social barriers, age and wealth.
When a disease score is determined as a result, the first diagnosis is adjustment disorder .
Symptoms
The reaction of people to the loss of the love of a fellow human being or to a longing that has not been fulfilled from the start is very different and can range from light forms with a relatively short duration to long and severe despair . If you are lovesick, you go through the following phases:
- Phase I: Not wanting to believe
- Phase II: Breaking feelings
- Phase III: reorientation
- Phase IV: New concept of life
The following symptoms can occur:
- Psychosomatic complaints (for example headaches, abdominal pain, inner restlessness, circulatory problems, concentration problems, insomnia),
- Problems in everyday life (e.g. school, work, social life),
- the interest in social contact with other people decreases, which can lead to social isolation ,
- the joy of life decreases, listlessness , giving up life goals,
- Problems with existing other partnerships (lies, thoughts of separation, concealment tactics),
- disturbed eating habits such as loss of appetite or extreme food addiction ,
- Fear of the future, pessimism,
- Social behavior disorders ( aggressive behavior , hostility, oppositional behavior, etc.),
- Depression , more rarely neuroses requiring treatment ,
- frequent increased consumption of drugs such as alcohol or nicotine , falling into an addiction ,
- self-harming acts ,
- suicidal thoughts or actions.
- In extreme cases, Broken Heart Syndrome can also occur.
According to a study by a research group headed by Naomi Eisenberger, the neuronal patterns in the brain in the event of social rejection resemble those of physical pain, such as those that occur in injuries. Ethan Kross from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor came to the same conclusion. In addition, imaging procedures (magnetic resonance imaging) found, among other things, that the anterior cingular cortex , which plays a role in physical pain and stress, is active.
Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, equates the feelings of lovesickness with the symptoms of drug withdrawal .
treatment
Typically, most people overcome this condition over time , but this can take many months.
The help of a psychiatrist makes sense if you have thoughts of suicide , no longer meet your everyday duties, are physically neglected, take pills for more than four weeks, consume alcohol every day or isolate yourself from friends / acquaintances. However, even lovesickness on average can be difficult to cope with for those affected.
Art and literature
In literature, the consequences of lovesickness are usually portrayed tragically: for those affected, the love stories often end in death ( Goethe , Werther ), in mutilation (the prince from Grimm's fairy tale Rapunzel throws himself from the tower in desperation and loses his sight ) or in Prison ( Joseph from the Bible is wrongly accused by the disappointed wife of Potiphar and then thrown into prison ( Gen 39.20 EU )). Lovesickness can also spur great literary achievements: Petrarch probably wrote his sonnets to Madonna Laura under the impression of an unhappy love .
Many romantics saw, partly from their own experience, the tragedy of humanity in unattainable love . Love can neither be achieved nor the pain of love overcome, because the happiness of an individual is inextricably linked with the fulfillment of love. Thus the pain of love becomes world pain and leads to a longing for death . An excellent example is the Winterreise by Wilhelm Müller . Many of the poems by Nikolaus Lenau and Heinrich Heine also have similar features.
In the chanson La Foule ( The crowd, 1957), composed by Michel Rivgauche, composed by Ángel Cabral and sung by Édith Piaf , the lyrical self gets into the arms of an unknown man in a crowded crowd, falls in love with him, loses him in the crowd but again and can never find him again later.
Lovesickness
Lovesickness (amor hereos, morbus amatoris) is madness that occurs with unfulfilled or unhappy love. Lovesickness is a physical illness caused by unfulfilled love, which began as early as 600 BC in antiquity. Is described by the poet Sappho, is described by Plutarch in the novella of the lovesick Antiochus and also appears again in the Corpus Hippocraticum . In the stories from the Arabian Nights , Avicenna's advice on curing lovesickness on the 134th night is mentioned. Lovesickness with its symptoms and effects on those affected was also presented in German-language literature of the Middle Ages. Another example is the anonymous mare The Buzzard from the 14th century, in which a king's son loses his bride and becomes pathologically heartbroken. His despair grows with crying and tearing hair. Then madness falls over him and the king's son becomes an animal. Until the happy end he vegetates as a forest man.
literature
- Ina Grau: Experiencing and processing lovesickness. In: Journal of Psychology. Issue 2. 2002.
- Bernhard Dietrich Haage: Love as a disease in the medical literature of antiquity and the Middle Ages. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 5, 1987, pp. 173-208.
- Bernhard D. Haage: Lovesickness. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 853 f.
- Eisenberger et al .: Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion. In: Science. 302, pp. 290-292, 2003.
- Eva Illouz: Why love hurts . Suhrkamp 2012.
- Craig Eric Morris, Chris Reiber, Emily Roman: Quantitative Sex Differences in Response to the Dissolution of a Romantic Relationship , Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, July 13, 2015, doi : 10.1037 / ebs0000054
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Typical symptoms of lovesickness ( Memento from May 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Bayerischer Rundfunk. Retrieved April 23, 2011.
- ↑ Mixed feelings: lovesickness. On withdrawal. Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 6, 2011, accessed on March 1, 2020 .
- ↑ Lovesickness hurts physically. FOCUS, accessed on March 1, 2020 .
- ^ T-Online Lifestyle treated for lovesickness. Retrieved April 23, 2011.
- ↑ La Foule. Retrieved June 11, 2019 .
- ↑ Friedrich v. Zglinicki : Uroscopy in the fine arts. An art and medical historical study of the urine examination. Ernst Giebeler, Darmstadt 1982, ISBN 3-921956-24-2 , p. 114 f.
- ↑ not to be confused with the popular name of the same name for venereal disease .
- ^ Bernhard D. Haage: Lovesickness. In: Encyclopedia of Medical History. 2005, p. 853.
- ↑ Hjalmar Crohns: On the history of love as a 'disease'. In: Archives for cultural history. Volume 3, 1905, pp. 66-86.
- ↑ Bernhard Dietrich Haage: Love as a disease in the medical literature of antiquity and the Middle Ages. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 5, 1987, pp. 173-208.
- ↑ See also Karl Sudhoff : The pseudohippocratic letter to Antiochus in a fragmentary German translation from the Middle Ages. In: Archives for the History of Medicine. Volume 8, 1915, pp. 293-295.
- ^ Gotthard Strohmaier : Avicenna. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-41946-1 , p. 125.
- ↑ Christel Wöhrle-Naser: The Minnelehre in the Eneas novel by Heinrich von Veldeke. The first Minnepathology in the German vernacular. In: Gundolf Keil, with the participation of Josef Domes (Ed.): Würzburger Fachprose-Studien. Contributions to medieval medicine, pharmacy and class history from the Würzburg Medical History Institute, [Festschrift] Michael Holler on his 60th birthday. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995 (= Würzburg medical-historical research. Volume 38), ISBN 3-8260-1113-9 , pp. 24-78.
- ^ Lovesick ( Memento from February 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) medical information. Retrieved April 23, 2011.
- ↑ Ortrun Riha : The "love sickness" and science. Interactions between medicine and literature. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 17, 1998, pp. 89-99.
- ↑ Review (RP)
