Psychology Atlas

How The Mind Works
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Psychological Phenomena

Lovesickness

Clinical and Motivational Phenomena

Lovesickness is the mental state brought on by the personal experience of unfulfilled, unconsummated or unrequited love, treated as a feature of infatuated love or limerence and grouped under the broader labels of romantic love and passionate love. This state of longing for an unavailable beloved is characterized by addictive cravings, depression and intrusive thoughts about the love object, and research on the biology of romantic love suggests that the early, intense stage of passionate love resembles addiction, though academics do not agree on how love addiction itself should be defined; lovesickness does not appear in modern medical texts, although it was historically considered a medical entity, and the related terms erotomania and obsessive love have also been discussed under its heading.

Facts
Classification
Type of Phenomenon
Emotional Phenomenon 1
Sources
1. Lovesickness (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia Lovesickness lead paragraph (w-bbfill-psych-diag-0926, keyword classification against phenomenon-kind enum definitions, hand-checked)View the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.