Pultizer Prize-winning American columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote a front page feature story on Melanie Cane the author of Poisoned Love. Click on the icon to read Jimmy Breslin's cover story:
Obsessive Love Disorder
Obsessive Love Disorder is a type of anxiety disorder which manifests in different forms, and obsessive love disorder may or may not be responsible for stalking behavior. Obsessive love disorder is an illness. Obsessive love disorder is thought to begin in earliest childhood when a baby is not properly attended to by its caretakers. Since the infant is totally dependent on its caretakers for life itself, it calls out for contact by means of crying. If those cries are too often ignored, the baby eventually withdraws into its own world, cut off from normal interchange with others in the outside world. The infant reaches out for contact, does not get what it needs, and so is forced to rely on its own fantasies in order to calm and soothe itself.
But this self-calming and self-soothing come at a very high cost; they are a model for a kind of love which does not depend on input from and interchange with the beloved, but which can occur in a world of complete fantasy. Once this model is established, the adult may find herself obsessively pursuing a desired lover as if that person could somehow supply the nurturing and detailed care which was missing in infancy, hence, obsessive love disorder. Since no adult can love another adult the way that a parent can love an infant, this can never happen. Seen from the outside-from the point of view of another adult, the object of desire that is, obsessive love disorder will appear as unreasonable demands, and so often will provoke a rejection, which, like the initial frustrations of the infant, only serves to increase the demands, which then provoke further rejection. It becomes a vicious cycle until the person with obsessive love disorder eventually is completely rejected by the adult lover. Although I was never diagnosed with Obsessive Love disorder per se, the way I felt about and behaved toward Luke in my book Poisoned Love, was a form of obsessive love disorder. I also describe the intense deprivation I experienced from my father. This is the type of parental deprivations that can lead to the development of obsessive love disorder.
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