Jingyu Zhang
FIQWS
Professor Shmidt & Fetherolf
December 11, 2019
Researched Critical Analysis Essay
Shakespeare said: “I admit nothing more than love, the more painful chastisement, nor did it serve more than happy things.” This famous saying means that love has two different aspects, which are sweet and painful. Not all the love is fulfilled. Throughout history, there are many endings of love stories with regrets. Physicians believed that unconsummated or unreturned love could cause a physical and mental disorder, which is called lovesickness. Sometimes, it leads to a tragic result. In “Nevsky Prospect”, Piskarev gets lovesickness and commits suicide when the girl he loves refuses to marry him. This text shows that some people who get lovesickness because of idealizing the beloved irrationally. They usually have fragile minds, and cannot withstand the bad results, so many people decide to kill themselves. In The Kreutzer Sonata, Pozdnyshev kills the musician, whom he thinks his wife has a relationship with. People kill others is also a kind of tragic results of lovesickness. This text shows that some people who get lovesickness because of jealousy. They usually have an irrational minds, and it leads to the killing of others. There are two factors that cause lovesickness: irrational idealization and jealousy.
Doctors in ancient times invented the conception of lovesickness. According to “Arrhythmias in the History: Lovesickness”, Lippi states: “The Hippocratic—Galenic tradition had provided a basic humoral explanatory model: if love is unsatisfied, sorrow causes melancholy, caused by an excess of black bile”(342). 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 cause melancholy, dejection, and love suffering, which means it could make people get lovesickness. Lovesickness 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 love and sickness is a significant problem for those philosophers and psychologists to work on. With the development of psychiatry and psychology, some scientists believe that lovesickness and psychosis are similar. According to “Valentine’s Day: Wright State Professor Investigates Lovesickness: ‘The Psychosis of Normal People’”, Sigmund Freud once called lovesickness as the psychosis of normal people(Wright State University 1). There are some commonalities between lovesickness and psychosis, such as insane, melancholy, and manic.
It is often said that the main reason of lovesickness is heartbreak in love. There are many causes of lovesickness. 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 states: “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” (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 returns to a normal level, the passion of love fades out. In that case, people would get lovesickness. People who get lovesickness are anguished. According to Lippi, she states that people who get lovesickness usually have similar symptoms such as insomnia, lack of appetite, hollowing of the eyes, anorexia, pallor, rapid pulse, and jaundice(342). The most serious problem is to endanger lives, such as killing others and suicide.
One of the causes of lovesickness 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 cannot 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 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 intention. He wants to save her. When the prostitute refuses to marry him, he cannot withstand it. His condition becomes more serious, and he commits suicide. The cause of this tragedy is that Piskarev over idealized the girl. According to “The Costs of Being Put on A Pedestal: Effects of Feeling Over-idealized”, the author points out: “In other words, there might be a point beyond which perceived idealization by a partner could be detrimental”(Tomlinson 386). I agree that over idealization is harmful, a point that needs emphasizing since so many people still believe that all kinds of the idealization are good for a relationship. People who are over idealization cannot recognize and accept the reality. It leads to lovesickness easily, and it is a kind of melancholia. There are many people want to commit suicide when they were beyond remedy. In Akcan’s view, people who commit suicide usually have a fragile mind and irrational thinking, and they cannot take the hits from lives (288). That’s why some people commit suicide because of lovesickness. Although it may seem of concern to only a small group of people who want to commit suicide, it should in fact concern anyone who cares about mental disorders.
There is another cause of lovesickness, which is that the lovers are together, but one of them always feels jealous of something, such as heterosexual contact, it is because many people are possessive in love. Being possessive and jealous is common in a relationship. If people are too jealous to do something irrational, that is also a kind of lovesickness, it is called pathological jealousy. It is a symptom of psychosis and delusion. People with pathological jealousy always think that their lover is unfaithful with some little things as evidence, even without any evidence. It is usually with manic emotion, danger, and tendency to attack their partner. In The Kreutzer Sonata, it says: “As I now recall them, the views I maintained were not at all so dear to me that I could not have given them up; but she was of the opposite opinion and to yield meant yielding to her, and that I could not do. It was quite the same with her… all of them things that could not be of any importance to either of us” (Tolstoy 202). It shows that Pozdnyshev is perverse, so he was always quarreling with his wife. Also, he is irritable, and he often got mad because some little things to argue with his wife. Tolstoy also mentions: “She became physically stouter and handsomer, like the late beauty of summer’s end. She felt this and paid attention to her appearance… There was no bridle, as is the case with ninety-nine hundredths of our women. And I felt this—and was frightened” (206). His wife started to change, and she became more beautiful. Her change in appearance attracted other men. Pozdnyshev felt nervous about that. It is like when people have something, they do not pay much attention, but if there is someone else wants and gets it, they will feel jealous about something out of control. According to “Pathological Jealousy: Romantic Relationship Characteristics, Emotional and Personality Aspects, and Social Adjustment”, Costa points out: “Subjects suffering from pathological jealousy may interpret irrelevant incidents as conclusive evidence of betrayal, while refusing to change their views even when confronted with conflicting information. They repeatedly accuse their partner of infidelity… Argumentations and accusations can result in verbal and physical violence and, in severe cases, even murder”(Costa 39). Costa is surely right about pathological jealousy because many studies have shown that people with pathological jealousy cannot control themselves well, and murder is common in those cases. Pozdnyshev has no substantial evidence would support that his wife and the musician have a relationship. He is suspicious to affirm that there is something between his wife and the musician. In the text, he says: “Before I ended as I did, I had several times been on the verge of suicide”(Tolstoy 209). Before he killed his wife, he tried to suicide. It shows that he got lovesickness already. As we have known, he is an irritable person, therefore, he cannot control himself well and murdered his wife at the end. It is a tragic result of lovesickness.
Yet some readers may challenge my view by insisting that people who get lovesickness would not commit suicide. According to Melancholy, Love, and Time, it says: “People who are depressed, lovesick, bored, or in pain often attempt to kill themselves. The lack of success and the often quite public nature of their death attempts point to a motive that has little to do with an attempt gain relief from pain”(Toohey 161). It demonstrates that people who get lovesickness are not really suicidal, they just want to get help from others. On the one hand, I agree with that point which is reasonable, but on the other hand, I still insist that lovesickness would cause suicide because not everyone could not be empathetic to the patients. According to “Some Thoughts About Empathy”, it states that the tendency of empathy between people is decreasing (Rollin 2). If people cannot get comfort or help from others, they would be more downhearted and still want to commit suicide.
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. According to “Lovesickness: Erasistratus Discovering the Cause of Antiochus’ Disease”, 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 measuring 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 the 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 (Harris 549). It shows that to get the beloved is one of the most useful methods to cure lovesickness. Also, measuring the pulse that Erasistratus used is a method to diagnose lovesickness. There were many treatments in the previous centuries, such as bloodletting and using cathartics.
Nowadays, there are many effective and scientific treatments of lovesickness. According to “This Is Your Brain on Love”, it tells that Donatella Marazziti who is a scientist 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 a low level of serotonin in the brains (Stromberg). When people fall in love, the level of serotonin decreases, and when they are not infatuated with their beloved anymore, the level increases. Therefore, Serotonin is good for lightening mood to effectively alleviate lovesickness. There is a kind of chemical substance, which is called melatonin and it is secreted at night. According to “Neuroprotective Effects of Melatonin on The Nigrostriatal Dopamine System in The Zitter Rat”, Hashimoto points out that melatonin can inhibit the activity of dopamine in the brain (Hashimoto 79). Dopamine causes the states of euphoria, delight, restlessness, and strong heartbeat. Love stimulates the excitement of the brain, and dopamine makes people feel that love is wonderful. So, melatonin could also help to alleviate lovesickness. Love is like addiction because they are related to similar chemicals. Changing the levels of serotonin and melatonin in the body is a scientific treatment of lovesickness. Those chemicals are able to help people who do not want to be obsessed. There are also many simple methods for the patients to alleviate lovesickness by themselves:
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, love is mysterious and lovesickness is a serious problem. Piskarev gets lovesickness and commits suicide because he lived in his imagination, and he could not accept the reality. Pozdnyshev gets lovesickness and murders his wife because of irrational thoughts and pathological jealousy. There are many people experiencing unconsummated love, but the most important thing is that to adjust own mind to avoid lovesickness.
Work Cited
Akcan, R, et al. “Unexpected Suicide and Irrational Thinking in Adolescence: A Case Report.” Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, vol. 18, no. 6, 2011, pp. 288–290.
Carey, Benedict. “The Brain in Love:” Edmonton Journal, 2003, p. D9.
Costa, Andrea Lorenada, et al. “Pathological Jealousy: Romantic Relationship Characteristics, Emotional and Personality Aspects, and Social Adjustment.” Journal of Affective Disorders, vol. 174, 2015, pp. 38–44.
Gogolʹ Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich, et al. The Collected Tales. Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
Harris, James. “Lovesickness: Erasistratus Discovering the Cause of Antiochus’ Disease.” Archives of General Psychiatry, 2012, p. 549.
Hashimoto, Ken-Ichi, et al. “Neuroprotective Effects of Melatonin on the Nigrostriatal Dopamine System in the Zitter Rat.” Neuroscience Letters, vol. 506, no. 1, 2012, pp. 79–83.
Joseph Stromberg. “This Is Your Brain on Love” Feb 12, 2015.
Lippi, Donatella. “Arrhythmias in the History.” Cardiac Electrophysiology Clinics, vol. 9, no. 3, 2017, pp. 341–344.
Peter G. Toohey. “Melancholy, Love, and Time” Article published January 2004, pp. 161–196.
Rollins, Judy A. Some Thoughts about Empathy. Vol. 40, 2014.
Tolstoy, Leo, and Aylmer Maude. The Kreutzer Sonata: ; The Devil, and Other Tales. Oxford University Press, 1940.
Tomlinson, Jennifer M, et al. “The Costs of Being Put on a Pedestal: Effects of Feeling over-Idealized.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, vol. 31, no. 3, 2014, pp. 384–409.
Wright State University. “Valentine’s Day: Wright State Professor Investigates Lovesickness: ‘The Psychosis of Normal People’.” Ascribe Higher Education News Service, 2003, pp. Ascribe Higher Education News Service, Jan 27, 2003.
