Can love still drive mad?

Our time loves the emotionally correct, hates suffering. She invented dating sites to locate the object of her desire, to "consume" without being upset ... Despite the protection that the screens are supposed to bring, love continues to defy the laws of reason.

We thought we were stronger than he was. Put love under control, domesticate it. But it is not because we can now geolocate an object of desire, consume it without waiting and throw it away after use that we had the last word. On the most pragmatic social networks and dating sites, it is the overflows and capsizing of unreasonable love sought by many adepts. It is also the "big eight" of the devouring passion that haunts the last album 

1 of the young singer Maissiat, straight in the line of the most famous lovers of French song. Françoise Hardy has devoted a book to this sentimental maze 

2, in which she describes her passion for an elusive being. " Romanticism, Which has sacralized mad love, is not limited to the so-called romantic era, summarizes the writer Ariane Charlton 

3. He preceded her and survived her for a long time. This thirst for the absolute belongs to human nature. Our framed and consumerist society has not overcome this madness. "

One recognizes the other, one no longer recognizes one another
"I did not meet her, I knew her," tries to explain Rémi, crazy about Sarah for a few months. This is usually the first symptom. "Mad" love is a revelation, evidence. Even if the other is absolutely not "our kind," even if it is exactly the opposite of what would be "good" for us, we "recognize" it. On the other hand, one no longer knows oneself. Unable to resist, suddenly dispossessed of all will. "The machine got packed right away," Remi continues. From the first night, it was folded. Knotted. Uncontrollable. 
Sarah is not 20, Rémi, him, 54, and three children, the last of the age of Sarah. "When you're a normal, civilized, intelligent being," he said, "you know it's not possible. Not viable. But you're still going, you can not do otherwise. That's what's crazy. "

Beyond the rational, the logical. Out of control. All those who have already been "lovers of love" juggle with the vocabulary of the supernatural: "magic," "spell," "miracle," "possession" ... There is no word to describe this impression at Both delicious and nauseating to escape to oneself. To be suddenly capable of the worst as of the best. Transcended. When Georges debuts in his life, Milena is 35 years old. She is married, a quiet mother of two children aged 3 and 7. She could never have foreseen the cataclysm. "From the first meeting, I felt something physically striking me, and something inside me that was melting from within," she recalls. I was ready for anything for George. Sometimes, at night, I waited for everyone to sleep at home to join him. We made love as if our days were numbered. And I came back, like a thief, without an ounce of guilt. "

Addiction of bodies, of hearts, obsession, metamorphosis ... But also compulsion, regression, hallucination, paranoia ... All the lexicon of psychiatry can pass. Hélène, 45 years old today, still does not come back from having camped on Ricardo's (presumed) landing, which she "adored," and which made her crazy with her mysteries and her unpredictable disappearances. "Ricardo, it was my" wolf, "she recalled three years later. Dark, wild, mysterious. A Meetic thunderbolt. Long, he played on the virtual. The longer he delayed our encounter, the more my desire flamed. The day he finally came to me, I was already all his own. 

My friends were worried. Not me. This unknown dominant who landed to make love to me filled me. I rarely enjoyed it as with him. This man of whom I knew nothing (neither his real name, nor his true address, nor his work ...) triggered in me an addiction which he maintained in virtuosity for more than a year: all to me when he was with But equally unpredictable, elusive. I never knew when he closed the door when I saw him again. What made me literally "crazy" ... of him. When he definitely disappeared, I experienced a real weaning. I do not think the hero can be worse. " When he definitely went, I experienced an actual weaning. I do not believe the hero can be worse. " When he definitely went, I experienced an actual weaning. I do not believe the hero can be worse. "

Yes, love can go crazy. The word is not too strong. The specialists of our intimate mechanisms (psych, biologists ...) confirm this. Even in the 21st century, even via the Internet. "Our age is suspicious of love," commented the psychoanalyst Catherine Vanier. We are careful because we know that madness is waiting. But speed dating and the web will not change anything. How many patients - especially women, who have a greater capacity to give themselves unreservedly - assert to me: "In love, me? Never! "They consume on dating sites" like men ," then return, sometime later," stiff lovers in love ." We may surround ourselves with screens, both literally and figuratively, to protect ourselves from others, the risk is always there. "

Total invasion

But what a better risk to run? "To be crazy about love is what we have more wonderful to experiment," continues the psychoanalyst. Which makes us lower our protections, walk on the head, and live delicious things ... To miss is to lose life. Yes, as long as one remains in the madness mad, "the banal neurosis," as summarizes the psychiatrist and addictologist Michel Reynaud. "We talk about madness because we lose our reason," he says with a smile. In fact, biologically, the cerebral state changes, we are overregulated: we then observe, in the brain, a hyperfunctioning of the areas of the search for pleasure and hypofunctional areas of critical analysis ... The invasion is total. It is a state of obliteration around a single object, Which is reminiscent of the mechanisms of addiction: a rare pleasure has taken place, it has become indispensable to our mental stability, responsible for all our happiness and all our suffering. Well beyond reasonable. Most of us spend a day there. And fortunately. Without that, no one would leave his parents as a teenager, and no one would ever break a couple once married ... It is the interest of this madness, to allow us to perform acts otherwise unimaginable. " And no one would ever break a couple once married ... It is the interest of this madness, to enable us to perform acts otherwise unimaginable. " And no one would ever break a couple once married ... It is the interest of this madness, to enable us to perform acts otherwise unimaginable. "

It is the enchantment of the nascent love, genetically programmed in us to ensure the survival of the species, demonstrated the neurobiologists 

4. It takes a bit of madness to overcome his anxiety on the other and blindly attach himself to a being. 

At least the time to have a progeny together and make it able to stand. About three years calibrate scientists. Often less, rarely more, to the great despair of addicted passion.

"The prototype of this love," continues Michel Reynaud, "is undoubtedly that of the infant and his mother: an unlimited, close-knit exchange of dependence and absolute satisfaction. It is perhaps this primordial state that one seeks, and that one finds again, in mad love. Our first link. Vital. Be two but make one. Risky betting, because the pies have warned us against fusion ... "When the other must belong to you and you to him, love can swing into the mortar, reveal hatred (harassment, possession, jealousy ...), explains Still Catherine Vanier. It is so powerful that if one goes to the end, one dies. "

The runaway has only one time

It all depends on what we do with the passionate runaway. In general, he calms down himself (sometimes before the famous three years). End of the story for some. Passage to love for others. "We can transform it," says the psychoanalyst. It's a job, a reinvention every day. The ability to love another in its difference is part of the signs of the end of an analysis. "

Amorous madness has only one time. In general. Except for borderline personalities, in which love can blow up all the locks. But it is only a trigger. No one becomes "mad" who was not already, latently, invisible sometimes. What is hardly reassuring, for how to know, before diving, the extent of our fragility? "There is no diagnosis to assess risks," Catherine Vanier smiles. No test to ensure we can go there safely. But that's no reason not to try! "