Written with a general audience in mind, On Romantic Love offers a new theory of love as a partially unconscious, sometimes rational and always controllable emotion, while explaining some of the neuroscience underlying our wildest passions.

Preface ; Chapter 1: Letter from a Friend ; Chapter 2: The Chemistry of Love ; Your Brain on Crack ; Beliefs and Brain Chemistry ; Taking the Drug Away ; Addicted to Grief ; Emotional Pain ; Stress, Pimples and Gray Hair ; Love and Hate ; Chapter 3: The Philosophy of Love ; Love as an Emotion ; Basic and Complex Emotions ; The James-Lange Theory ; The Conjunctive Theory of Emotions ; The Connection Problem ; The Problem of Emotional Responses to Fiction ; The Perceived-Response Theory ; Chapter 4: Irrational Love ; Does the Idea of Irrational Love Make Sense? ; You Call It Madness, I Call It Love ; Irrational Compassionate Love ; Love as a Moral Emotion ; Love as a History ; Love and Personal Identity ; Is Love Unconditional? ; Love and Personal Identity ; Love and Sex ; Chapter 5: Relationships and Insecure Attachment ; Avoidant Attachment Style ; Secure Versus Insecure Attachment ; Avoidant Attachment ; Anxious Attachment ; Childish Relationships ; Jealousy and Anxious Attachment ; Attachment and the Relationship Theory ; Can Attachment Styles Change? ; Familiar Love ; Attachment Love ; Can Animals Love? ; The Other Dimension of Sex ; Chapter 6: Our Unconscious Affections ; Opponents of Unconscious Affection ; Unconscious Affect ; Unconscious Love ; In Your Dreams ; Is Love a Disposition ; Chapter 7: He Is Just Not That into You ; (And Other In-Between Cases) ; Prototype Theory ; Non-Monogamous Love as In-Between Cases ; <"Love>" is a Gradable Verb ; He's Just Not That Into You ; Ambivalence ; Chapter 8: How To Fall Out of Love ; Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche ; Psychoanalysis and Talk Therapy ; Emotional Regulation and Avoidance Behavior ; The Repetition Technique ; Prolonged Exposure Therapy ; Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing ; Deep Relaxation and Meditation ; Heartbreak and Placement Conditioning ; The Sinclair Method ; Out, Damned Spot: Using Soap to Wash Away Your Negative Feelings ; Emotional Regulation as a Route to Happiness ; The End: The Heart Wants What It Wants ; References

"[C]ompared to other introductory books analysing love, this book is incredibly well balanced. [...] Firstly, the interdisciplinarity of bringing up the true nature of love from the perspectives of science, philosophy, and sociology. Brogaard does not just simply show us the research results of various different academic fields, but also turns those into stories, and constructs her own opinions based on them." -- =Ohata Hiroshi, Translated from Japanese by Hannah Kentridge "Brogaard's book is written to be accessible to general readers without sacrificing philosophical content. It offers more than enough interesting current theoretical work to merit serious attention by professional readers. Whimsical line drawings by illustrator Gareth Southwell add to the book's appeal. Essential." --Choice "...Berit Brogaard's On Romantic Love is an achievement... Brogaard illustrates her arguments with acute philosophical intelligence, stylistic verve, and concrete human examples... She allows readers to engage in a very personal way with profound, contentious philosophical positions. She also navigates easily through the tempestuous technical waters of contemporary neurological research on love, which is where we might expect a flood of future insights." --The Chronicle of Higher Education "...it is a helpful manual to be used in case of being harmed in love..." -- Metapsychology Online Reviews "[A] good read, pacy and informative with a nice balance of narratives, debate overviews and claim staking." -- The Philosophers' Magazine

Selling point: Includes a new 2017 preface Selling point: Offers a new theory of love as a partially unconscious, sometimes rational, and (usually) controllable emotion Selling point: Features accessible explanations of research by cognitive scientists and philosophers on the topics of heartbreak, obsession, jealousy, and narcissism Selling point: Highly readable tour of recent research on romantic love, using entertaining anecdotes and examples Selling point: Offers a new theory of love as a partially unconscious, sometimes rational, and (usually) controllable emotion Selling point: Features accessible explanations of research by cognitive scientists and philosophers on the topics of heartbreak, obsession, jealousy, and narcissism Selling point: Enlivened with entertaining anecdotes and examples

Berit Brogaard is Professor of Philosophy, University of Miami. Her book Transient Truths was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. In her academic research she specializes in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and the cognitive sciences.

Selling point: Includes a new 2017 preface Selling point: Offers a new theory of love as a partially unconscious, sometimes rational, and (usually) controllable emotion Selling point: Features accessible explanations of research by cognitive scientists and philosophers on the topics of heartbreak, obsession, jealousy, and narcissism Selling point: Highly readable tour of recent research on romantic love, using entertaining anecdotes and examples Selling point: Offers a new theory of love as a partially unconscious, sometimes rational, and (usually) controllable emotion Selling point: Features accessible explanations of research by cognitive scientists and philosophers on the topics of heartbreak, obsession, jealousy, and narcissism Selling point: Enlivened with entertaining anecdotes and examples