I think the rational self's shock and awe at the obsessional nature of
romantic love is well justified. It is quite unappealing in some
lights; one wouldn't want to be on the wrong end of some of its more
sinister manifestations.
Lyotard says something somewhere about the instability of the
distinction between hostage and persecutor: "I am your slave!" - which
is why I keep following you around, sending you creepy text messages,
intercepting your mail and otherwise making a pest of myself.
One wishes to be admired, but within reason. One wishes to admire,
given a suitable object, and perhaps even to give way to a pleasurable
swooning abandon - but not to become Gollum, padding about on webbed
feet in the slimy darkness, hissing after one's "precious".
Hill's _The Songbook of Sebastian Arrurruz_ is a key text for me. It
puts on all sorts of masks, and masques, and airs; but the keening
note still keens.
Passion and pathology share a root in suffering; the difference is
that the pathology has been awarded a category (it's got an "-ology").
The real thing, according to almost all of the available literature on
the subject, is untreatable.
Dominic
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