ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a quote from Andreas Capellanus's The Art of Courtly Love, written towards the end of the twelfth century as the beginnings of our modern conception of romantic love. It explains with an examination of what love really is and compares it to the Hollywood 'happily ever after' idealisation that would make us to believe. As Tom Scheff observes in his study of love in popular songs, many songs express the idea of love as a mental impairment with powerful imagery of the craziness or insanity in mental disorders. Sternberg proposes that there are three key dimensions involved in love that includes intimacy, passion and commitment. Theoretical writings on the nature of love, particularly passionate or erotic love, bear a remarkable similarity to the nature of mania, one could often substitute the word 'love' for 'mania' and the observations made about either state would often remain within context.
