Jingyu Zhang

FIQWS

October 11, 2019

Persuasive Essay Final Draft

    What is the nature of true love? There is no exact definition. Love is mysterious and complex. Shakespeare said: “I admit nothing more than love, the more painful chastisement, nor did it serve more than happy things.” It means there are two aspects of love, which are sweet and painful. The thing is that not all love is consummate. In love, there are always many endings with regrets, which sometimes cause lovesickness. It is that unconsummated or unreturned love was believed to cause a physical and mental disorder.(cite from notebook) Piskarev gets lovesickness because he can not believe that the girl who was wonderful in his mind is a prostitute, he falls in love with someone who is perfect in his dream. This text shows that people who idealize the beloved irrationally would succumb to lovesickness because they are too vulnerable to accept the reality. Marya also gets lovesickness because her family is opposed to her relationship and she gets married to the wrong person. It demonstrates that external forces can make the lovers get lovesickness. There are two factors that cause lovesickness: irrational idealization and external forces.

    Doctors in ancient times invented the conception of lovesickness. Hippocrates put forward that love is based on four bodily liquids, which are blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Imbalance of black bile could causes melancholy, dejection, and love suffering, which means it could make people get lovesickness. It was described poetically in ancient literary works. There are many literary works are about lovesickness, such as Love in the Time of Cholera and The Horseman on the Roof. The relationship between sickness and love is a significant problem for those philosophers and litterateur to work on. Today, with the development of psychiatry and psychology, some scientists believe that there are some commonalities between lovesickness and psychosis. People who get lovesickness usually have similar symptoms such as depression, mania, insomnia, dizziness, irregular pulse, fever, lack of appetite, and insanity. The most serious problem is to endanger lives, such as suicide. The main reason of lovesickness is heartbreak in love.

There are different types causes of lovesickness. Hippocratic Medicine explains that most of the love with passion will become the love with sadness in a few years, and the lovers could get lovesickness. According to The Brain in Love, Carey says: “The pictures showed that the experience of romantic attraction activated those pockets of the brain with a high concentration of receptors for dopamine, the chemical messenger closely tied to states of euphoria, craving, and addiction.”(Carey 401) It means that when people see their beloved person, there are some chemical substances are released in their body, which make them feel excited and keep the newness. After a few years, the secretion of the chemical substances return to normal level, the passion of love fade out. In that case, people would get lovesickness. 

One of them is that only one person in a relationship has desire or enthusiasm, which is called unrequited love. It is the most common one. Psychological problems arise in an unrequited love relationship when the lover does not think of anything else but his beloved. Irrational unrequited love often leads to tragedy. Usually, unrequited patients tend to indulge in fantasy, they are less likely to take effective action in reality. They like to exaggerate their beloved and belittle themselves. This is a harmful mode of thinking. In the text, Piskarev idealizes the girl as wonderful as Perugino’s Bianca. He thinks she must be chaste, virginal, noble, and pure. In fact, she is a prostitute, and the only thing she has is beauty. He can not believe that. In the text, it says: “He did not think of eating anything without any interest, without any life, his eyes gazed out the window to the courtyard, where a dirty water carrier was pouring water that froze in the air, and the bleating voice of a peddler quavered.”(Gogol 262) It shows that Piskarev gets lovesickness after he knew that the girl is a prostitute. There is a perfect girl in his dream, so he takes opium in order to see the girl that he imagined. It makes him look pale and emaciated. According to the text, it says: “That she’s been drawn into depravity by some involuntary, terrible accident… and that at a moment when it is enough just to reach out a hand to save her from drowning?”(Gogol 264) When he wakes up from his dream, he still thinks that the girl was forced to be a prostitute, and that is not her own intention. He wants to save her. When the prostitute refuses to marry him, he can not withstand it. His condition becomes more serious, and he commits suicide. That is the worst result of lovesickness.

There is another type of the cause, which is the lovers love each other, but they can not be together because of some reason, such as distance and barrier of external force. It sometimes harms to both of the lovers, and it makes them feel helpless. Consequently, the lovers get lovesickness. In the novel, Marya falls in love with Vladimir, and he is not accepted by her family because he is poor. Therefore, they decide to get  married secretly on one night. Unfortunately, Marya faints in the church, and Vladimir gets lost during that night. When Marya faints, Burmin goes to the church and plays a joke that to complete the ceremony with Marya. When she awakes, she realizes that she got married with the wrong person, and Burmin drives away. In the novel, it says: “The day passed happily, but during the night Masha was taken ill. They sent to town for a doctor. He arrived towards evening and found the sick girl delirious. A severe fever developed, and for two weeks the poor girl lay at death’s door.”(Pushikin 26) It means that Marya can not believe the fact that she got married with another man. It makes her get lovesickness. Although some lovers are in love, there are still many situations, which make them can not be together and lead to lovesickness.

There are different treatments for lovesickness between the previous centuries and the present. One of the treatment is that to let the patients get their dream lovers. In ancient Greece, The prince Antiochus was sick and almost die, but no one knew what kind of disease he got. The doctor Erasistratus was summoned to the palace because of his illness. When Erasistratus was feeling his pulse, his stepmother came in, his pulse beat faster, and his face turned red. The doctor realized that the prince’s illness was lovesickness, and he told king the truth. In order to save his son who was dying because of the infatuation for his stepmother, he generally betrothed the queen to the prince. There are medical treatments in the middle ages. In the 14th century, Confessio Amantis by John Gower talks about a lover who got lovesickness was cured by Cupid put the herbs on his forehead and waist. In the 17th century, there was a famous physician in France who suggested that using the method of bloodletting to cure lovesickness. For those who were ill seriously, they must use vein bloodletting therapeutics. There are many other treatments at that time, such as basking in the sun, eating lamb, lettuce, eggs, and fish, and using lustramentum. Those treatments are used in the previous centuries.

At present, there are many effective and scientific treatments of lovesickness. There was a scientist Donatella Marazziti who from Italy studied the chemical substances in the brain of those people who fell in love. He found when they fell in love, there was low levels of serotonin in the brains. After one year, the lovers were not infatuated with their beloved anymore, and the levels of serotonin in their brains were increased. Serotonin is good for lightening mood to effectively alleviate lovesickness. To increase serotonin levels, it is helpful to eat more amino acid-rich foods and carbohydrates, such as eggs and bananas. There is a kind of chemical substance, which is called melatonin and it secretes at night. It promotes sleep and has many physiological functions such as anti-aging, immunoregulation, anti-cancer and so on. Melatonin can inhibit the activity of dopamine in the brain, thus helping to alleviate lovesickness. Another study shows that oxytocin is also relative. Therefore, the scientist inferred that those chemicals is able to help people who do not want to be obsessed. Love is like addiction because they are related with similar chemicals. Changing the levels of dopamine, melatonin, and oxytocin in the body is scientific treatment of lovesickness. There are many useful methods to alleviate lovesickness. First of all, to see psychologist to determine the level and take medicine under the guidance of the doctor. For the patients, they can adjust themselves appropriately by following methods: 

To change their own mind, and take self-examination if they are too paranoid. 

To distract attention, and enrich the lives. 

To make more friends, and do not affirm that love is the most important relationship in life. 

To tell friends about the troubles, and let friends enlighten them. 

All in all, lovesickness is a serious problem. Whether consummate love or unconsummated love, both are parts of lives. Piskarev got lovesickness because he lived in his imagination and he could not accept the reality. Marya succumbs lovesickness because some external factors made them can not be together. Even though idealization is helpful for long-term relationships, it should be rational in order to avoid getting lovesickness. Also, one may need to adjust his/her mind if there are any other external forces that cause unconsummated love.