The Incurable Romantic by Francis Talley
A suspiciously Freudian look at "abnormal" psychological cases relating to love. It had some good points and connections overall, but the wobbly execution made me skeptical of its evidence.
Published January 14, 2025



Book: The Incurable Romantic: And Other Tales of Madness and Desire by Frank Talley
Release Date: September 18, 2018
Publisher: Basic Books
Format: eBook
Source: Library
An Interesting Point from Aeon
An update from January 21, 2025—
I love Aeon and its sister magazine, Psyche. Always thought-provoking! I do think—as one Instagram comment mentions below this linked article—that it's very selective with its evidence and ignores any studies that don't support its point, but that the writer makes some thoughtful points about the flaws of psychoanalysis.
Considering he also uses twin studies as the basis of his argument, I have to agree about its limitations; I just read How to Be Multiple, and twin studies are not nearly as conclusive as he makes them sound. He also cites the fact that Western women—the main demographic for therapy—aren't happier in therapy, but I'd have to point there are plenty of other contributing factors impacting happiness levels, so you can't exactly use that as proof.
Like I discuss in my review, I don't love psychology that dwells too much on childhood development and the unconscious (and do get eye-roll-y that everyone calls everything "trauma"), but do think we should give unconscious influences and patterns some credit for shaping us too. But, like the article writes, I do largely think that we are our attention, so self-awareness via therapy has a tipping point too. To me, I thought the writer's "new, innovative" take on their own therapy practice was literally just regular therapy, too...
Therapy is definitely not helpful to everyone, nor is it a necessity to being a good human being; all that matters is whether you might find it helpful in a given moment. And in many ways, it's just the chosen format for someone in examining the human condition, because the writer points to a lot of philosophers in constructing their new method—and I think philosophy is equally psychological!
Some lines I loved:
"Being there for another person is uncomfortable. It is difficult. There is no peace, since the other continually changes, but that is the art."
"The danger arises when the therapeutic relationship becomes a replacement for real-world relationships – when we are encouraged to ‘take it to therapy’ rather than attempting to engage with family or friends about painful and sensitive matters. Real-world relationships are strengthened by difficult conversations, and communities evolve by discussing matters that lurk at the edge of the respectable."
"I believe that the true therapeutic work is to battle resentment. Resentment is the core of all my ills, the pain itself isn’t. Resentment arises when we are in pain but believe that we are entitled to not feel pain."
In The Incurable Romantic, Frank Tallis recounts the extraordinary stories of patients who are, quite literally, madly in love: a woman becomes utterly convinced that her dentist is secretly infatuated with her and drives him to leave the country; a man destroys his massive fortune through trysts with over three thousand prostitutes-because his ego requires that they fall in love with him; a beautiful woman's pathological jealousy destroys the men who love her.
Along the way, we learn a great deal about the history of psychiatry and the role of neuroscience in addressing disordered love. Elegantly written and infused with deep sympathy, The Incurable Romantic shows how all of us can become a bit crazy in love.
Why I Picked It Up
Over the past few years, I've been methodically unpeeling pretty much every common human activity via microhistories as if I am an alien coming to Earth to study the basics. In my most recent psychological and philosophical kick, a subtopic of mine has been closeness, individuality, and the tension between them. (Literal theme of my life as an identical twin.)
And in nearly every behavioral analysis book list cluster, there's always at least one read about all the "abnormal" fringe cases in a given topic (like Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.)
The Incurable Romantic attempted to be the romantic love version, examining the extremes that people push themselves to (or I guess are subjected to?) in various relationships and scenarios. Each chapter or essay covers a different case.
My library hold came in, which made the decision for me.
I Don't Know About This One, But I Appreciate What It's Trying to Do—
In the same way that books like On Love by Alain de Botton try to separate out all the individual aspects of a very holistic feeling (falling in love), The Incurable Romantic tries to isolate a ton of different factors influencing peoples' romantic variants.
Romance, by nature, is inherently tense because it forces you to confront aspects of yourself, be vulnerable and subordinate to the influence of someone else (which you cannot control), etc,. Even when being in love is the best, most addictive feeling, something's gotta give—and that's destabilizing, especially to those who fear change or loss of the self. For some people, that can veer into cases problematic enough to need his treatment.
Honestly, I did appreciate the argument for love as mental illness in the beginning. Whether or not you agree, the comparisons feel fair! As a whole, it felt like Talley liked to phrase things specifically to feel inflammatory on a line level, and I imagined him imagining pull-quotes, which might be an unfair assumption. There were enough "hot takes" in here to make me raise my eyebrows (even when I agreed!) re: just-vague-enough phrasing, which I felt was intentional.
What I Thought About Going Into It
Anyway, I think a lot about whatever we consider the "normal" brain to be and how we are constantly regulating and de-regulating it. It's not just chemical either via substances. Daily behaviors you engage in (love, exercise, etc,.) also change the levels of neurotransmitters in your brain. In many cases, you can argue for normalcy or abnormality either way—which is why books like this illustrating genuine extremes can be helpful in understanding what that bell curve really looks like.
I've also thought a lot about my view of my individuality lately. I tend to be extra-sensitive to any perceived threat to my self-reliance. Because of that, I do know I have a hard time navigating relationships because connecting romantically asks you to at least relax that core aspect of your identity. In the short-term, I dislike anything that makes me feel any less independent, even if that's the whole damn point. (But after realizing this, I've worked on it about as much as I can theoretically without another person involved.)
“In fact, the symptoms that Lucretius associates with love going well are only marginally less dramatic than the symptoms he associates with love going wrong.”
“Almost everything in the universe can be described in different ways and at different levels, and the mental life of humans is no exception.”
One essay talked about love addiction—not sex addition, but rather a man who couldn't help but attempt to "win" the love of prostitutes, losing interest as soon as they eventually fell; he destroyed his business and drove himself (and his actual family) into debt. Another case discussed the sudden, random "love" a woman felt for her dentist when waking from surgery, which provoked stalking so severe and inescapable that he eventually moved to Dubai. Another talked about extreme, lopsided jealousy and the failures of couples' therapy in intervening, etc,. etc,. The point is that all these majorly exaggerated cases are of course worst case scenario, but also illuminate the gentler versions of each negative experienced in "normal" people navigating love and romance, nudging out some of the existential questions about the process itself.
It was interesting, although I didn't love Talley's writing style for some reason. About partway through the book, I realized that it was because it seemed authoritative and detached (and a bit holier-than-thou) but didn't actually back up its claims with concrete studies or analysis. Instead, I had to take a lot of wobbly citations at face value, which made me distrust the book as a whole even if there were some points I found myself nodding along with.
“Approximately 70 percent of dating couples cheat on each other.”
Like: objectively, there is NO WAY, and the use of a stat like this casts doubt on the entire rest of the book. Even if a number like that surprises me, I don't automatically distrust it—but a number this shocking should at least explain some sort of how. You can't just drop a number like that and continue with your discussion of the individual situation. There's not even a footnote or citation (at least that I could find in the eBook copy.)
I obviously read a lot of psych, and I'm always asking questions about the studies themselves. How was it conducted? What were its limitations? Who were the subjects—and were they hard to find? (Ex: a study in Four Thousand Weeks noted that it was difficult to survey whether people felt they had no time because those who most vividly felt pressed for time wouldn't have devoted time to taking a survey.) Who funded the study, and what else are they researching that the claim might support?
Data isn't necessarily more rational just because it's empirical, and I do think science is overall getting a lot better about articulating how imperfect the process can be! So I would have loved to see more nuance here. And that's not just me being an optimist.
In all fairness though, I'm biased against anything Freudian. (And he did admit that sometimes he just made shit up in lectures he was unprepared for while high on cocaine, so.) When we start veering too much into childhood and the unconscious, I get a little skeptical and need more evidence to support each claim.
Talley also says that few people marry their ideal partners because "ideal" is inherently impossible to live up to and implies the unreal (and I get his argument on a linguistic level, but think it's very easy to misinterpret what he's getting at.) And he also tries to argue some points specifically related to gender—like how artistic creation is a male fitness endeavor to attract a mate. But then doesn't really describe why he sees creativity as fundamentally male?? Or at least, his inclusions of women in his calculation feels incomplete and unsatisfying.
The Incurable Romantic may also feel unsatisfying to some readers because the result is in the title: incurable. For many of the cases he sees, Talley has accepted that there's no real ending in sight for the patient. I did appreciate that he noted who stopped seeing him, ghosted, had trouble keeping up with treatment, etc,. Because that's a very real problem within therapy; it's sometimes a Band-Aid for a bullet hole because people have a hard time adhering or being consistent. We change our minds about what is helpful or pressing! It's realistic in its discussion of adherence, and so, while some chapters felt weirdly cut off, I also respected Talley's discussion of lacking closure.
That being said, there were some points I liked within the book. So although I found a lot of flaws or issues, I still appreciate the discussion and attempt overall even though I disagreed with plenty. For one, it's healthy to read books that I disagree with or that challenge my ways of thinking! It's also helpful for me to know that it's not only the topic of connection vs. solitude that compels me to continue down this philosophical rabbit hole, but rather the (sometimes invisible or camouflaged) skill of individual writers and readers tackling the complications of the human condition.
“Feelings are often vague, misleading, and inconsistent. They don't always provide us with reliable information about the world, other people, or our circumstances.”
I found his citation of Sternberg's theory of love interesting. I'd never heard this one before: the idea that romantic love is bound together by three factors: intimacy, passion, and commitment.
In the case he was discussing, he was confused by one elderly woman hallucinating her dead husband, because it was clear that they had nothing in common and she didn't ever feel close to him at all. She eventually said she just missed the sex, which threw Talley for a loop.
Scientifically, passion biologically cools some over time (with hormone changes like the shift from "novelty-focused" dopaminergic processing and the natural lowering of testosterone) meaning that intimacy and commitment are usually closer bindings of romance later in life. Neuroscientists and psychoanalysts agree that love eventually relies more on companionship, even within passionate couples. He argues that any marriage lacking intimacy will eventually fail or turn empty because people will only stay together out of a sense of duty.
But this case seemed to prove to him that if the passion never dies, someone doesn't necessarily "fall out of" love, but losing one of the other two factors would eventually do so. Interesting.
“In the first throes of a relationship, when desire is at its strongest, couples are bound together more closely by sex than conversation. Desire is more powerful than liking.”
He talks about the idea that I first encountered in Alain de Botton's works (and have been mulling over via my fiction lately) being that to love at all, you have to be a little ignorant at first to the humanity of the other person, noting anecdotally via conversations with patients that men especially have a tendency to approach the women they desire as being "unreal," which is also why you might hear (like in the Modern Love column analysis conducted by its editors — I'll try to find the exact link) that people have a tendency to romanticize their exes more once they lose access to them and their nervous system cools, without necessarily giving that grace to their current partners. Grass is always greener, folks. When you're distant enough, that rosiness sneaks in. When someone becomes more real to you, it doesn't. Hence, "the honeymoon stage" of infatuation, which will always wear off.
Talley also argues that so much of our trouble within love is that we're inclined to see the world as just and fair and that we feel we deserve reciprocity. But he would agree with the Stoics I've been reading and agreeing with lately: Nature (or your version of God, if you're religious) will act in accordance with its will, and will not bend just to give you what you want. You're one part of the whole, and there's a vision beyond you, so you should be grateful for all of it even when painful.
Although I disagree with his statistics and methodology and ways of presenting information as if it's unfailingly accurate, I do appreciate his discussion of some broader controversies in psychology, like the dangers of labeling conditions (which I think about alll the time), divided camps over whether to call something behavioral an addiction, how love is wildly similar to fear within our bodies, etc,. I liked how he handled loving vs. understanding and the difference between each, which has been probably the main theme of my reading and writing recently.
“All mature adults must accept that they are essentially unknowable, and that they will never know the one they love."”
That's probably true just because of the limitations of language, the speed at which we change and unfairly expect others to keep up, and the way we romanticize others more when distant from them, etc,. So then the acceptance enters the picture via the whole "nuance as novelty" framework of commitment, confirmation of the decision-making process, willingness to be affected by someone else, etc,. Which might be a lot more about timing and luck past the checkboxes of compatibility. Those ideas, at least, align with my current vision of romance.
Still, I wanted more from him to understand why he thought each conclusion actually mattered, a craving he could have resolved—even with the lack of closure in each—if he'd explained more about his reasoning.
I Do Love Psych, But Not Psychoanalysis...
Honestly, I don't know how much stock I place in this one as a whole, because the ideas I loved were also familiar from other works. I wouldn't go to this one first, perhaps, but maybe to round out a specific reading list (like I did: picking the "abnormal cases" coverage to push the limits.)
The stats and conclusions felt really woolly and unsupported. I obviously love reading psychology and neuro, but psychoanalysis specifically is not really my vibe. I prioritize being an active person too so am already biased against concepts that seem to degrade our free will and control. When it gets too unconscious or developmental, I start to mentally check out some.
For example, Talley explores love (especially sexual love) as being fundamentally a solution to the existential angst and fear of death. That's quite the chapter, honestly. I'm impressed by how deep it goes, even though I went "Whoah, that's a leap."
Obviously, our childhood and caregivers' attentions matter and do have outsized impact on our frameworks, but I think psychoanalysis specifically assumes it's all more set in stone than it is. I'm inclined more towards behavioral psychology. I think people absolutely have their long-term patterns, but that recognition can just be helpful for breaking down a specific moment or anticipating change in future, similar choices.
I did appreciate the book's discussion of certain psychological conflicts—like whether or not labeling/diagnosing an issue helps—because I've wondered how much is just self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think something's inescapable, it probably is, and a lot of our attempts to narrativize are really just hindsight and confirmation bias telling us we can fully decipher something or extract meaning. (I say this as someone who 100% does this anyway.)
Of course, it depends on how you're using psychoanalysis; I definitely see a positive benefit and personal growth from decoding myself via psych, and so it empowers me to make better choices. Whether the psychoanalysis is correct doesn't entirely matter. I'm just very aware that you can come up with fourteen reasons that each sound equally plausible, and a lot of psychoanalysis may just involve picking your favorite.
Although I definitely think that there are unconscious influences on our behaviors (another topic I love reading about in books like Drunk Tank Pink or The Confidence Game or The Age of Magical Overthinking), Freud specifically sometimes feels like astrology to me. You can tell yourself whatever you want.
So I just...got skeptical at his lack of breakdown. I'm used to more concrete evidence in my psych books. Especially when talking about developmental psychology, the unconscious, childhood, etc,.—my Devil's Advocate tendency kicked in. "But what about...?" The narrative felt overly simplified, or perhaps convenient, in some areas.


This part reminded me so much of The Haunting of Hill House (TV), which illustrates so beautifully that the horror genre can exist so thematically to push our boundaries about grief, permanence, etc,. An entertaining (and stunning) show that's a favorite of mine for this reason. Plus, I love "spooky season"-type shows anyway. This is what I mean by craving horror that's atmospheric rather than gruesome.
I will eventually review The Chemistry Between Us, which was solid in the neuroscience but also a little daunting/dense. And I loved its final chapter!