Love addiction today: conceptualization, assessment and treatment

Paolo Antonelli, Marco Fortunati, Gioele Salvatori, Daniel Giunti
This paper aims to present the current state of the art about love addiction, an obsessive and exasperated form of love towards a romantic partner, compromis-ing one’s own wellbeing. The first part concerns the definition, phenomenology and prevalence of the above mentioned condition. The main theories regarding love addiction nosographic conceptualization are discussed therein, as well as sev-eral diagnostic considerations to differentiate it from similar pathologies. The sec-ond part of the paper outlines the main hypotheses about love addiction etiology, the measures that are most commonly used for its assessment and the treatment options that have been proposed so far. Overall, it should be noted that even though love addiction has been discussed for a long time, the academic literature appears to be fragmented and unclear, which is to be considered, according to this paper authors, the main limit to overcome in order to effectively help out those who suffer from such condition.