Obsessive love disorder (OLD) is a proposed[by whom?] condition in which one person feels an overwhelming obsessive desire to possess and protect another person, sometimes with an inability to accept failure or rejection. Symptoms include an inability to tolerate any time spent without that person, obsessive fantasies surrounding the person, and spending inordinate amounts of time seeking out, making, or looking at images of that person.[1][2]
Characteristics
Depending on the intensity of their attraction, obsessive lovers may feel entirely unable to restrain themselves from extreme behaviors such as acts of violence toward themselves or others.[citation needed]
Sigmund Freud considered that obsessive love might be underpinned by an unconscious feeling of hate for which it overcompensated - thereby explaining the sufferer's feeling of a need to protect the love object.[4] Later analysts saw obsessive love as driven more by narcissistic need, the preoccupation with the love-object offering defenses against worries and depressive feelings;[5] while Jungians see it as rooted in the projection of the inner self onto another person.[6]
Peabody, Susan (1995) [1989]. Addiction to Love: Overcoming Obsession and Dependency in Relationships (illustrated, reprint, revised ed.). Ten Speed Press. ISBN9780890877159.
Moore, John (2006) [2010]. Confusing Love with Obsession: When Being in Love Means Being in Control (illustrated, reprint, revised ed.). Hazelden Books. ISBN978-1592853564.
