Therapy culture has an uncanny capacity to turn every human passion into a psychological problem — to the extent that it even warns us against love.

Have you noticed how many self-help books treat the feeling of love, especially of the intense and passionate variety, as a psychological problem? Anne Wilson Schaef’s bestseller, Escape From Intimacy, uses labels such as “sexual addiction”, “romance addiction”, “relationship addiction” to stigmatise passionate feelings towards others. Books such as Women Who Love Too Much or When Parents Love Too Much caution people against allowing their feelings for others to overtake their lives. In the past two decades, passionate feelings have been continually represented as destructive and dangerous.

“Too much love” is said to lead to the many psychological illnesses associated with “codependency”. It is claimed that parents who love too much produce dysfunctional people who are over-reliant on the approval of others. It is also alleged that individuals who crave intimacy are not in touch with their own needs — they suffer from the psychological dysfunction of sex addiction. These health warnings directed against the desire for intimacy reveal one of the most unattractive features of therapy culture: its intense aversion to intimate, informal and dependent relationships. Instead of passionate commitment, we now have the diagnosis of “relationship addiction”.

Why such hesitancy towards the emotion of love? It has little to do with love as such. This concern is directed by an emotional script that regards all feelings that are directed outside of oneself with mistrust. Consequently, individuals who are prepared emotionally to make sacrifices for others are often regarded as victims of negative emotions. What about people who have too much faith? Just say that they’re suffering from religious addiction.

In this context, any manifestation of love, friendship and loyalty can be labelled as a form of addictive behaviour. The British-based PROMIS Recovery Centre asserts that actions once seen as altruistic should be diagnosed as an addiction: “compulsive helping”.

According to this definition, individuals who make great sacrifices or who do not place their individual needs before the needs of a relationship are showing symptoms of addiction. The diagnosis of addiction, given to one emotion after another, turns a desire for intense relationships into some kind of disease.

Responsibility and loyalty are still upheld as public virtues, but in practice these ideals are compromised by the exhortation to put oneself first. The very idea that a relationship of dependency can be the root cause of emotional addiction represents a deeply pessimistic statement about the informal world of private life.

It is but a prelude to the conclusion that people cannot be expected to conduct personal relationships without professional support.

The attempt to liberate us from relationship dependency can have only one outcome — that we are expected to subordinate our lives to the dictates of the therapist. Forget any notion that the erosion of our sense of dependence on friends and lovers enhances our individual independence: it merely leads to the replacement of one form of dependence by another. Thankfully, informal relations of dependence still play an important role in our lives. But at the same time, an army of therapists, mentors, facilitators, life-gurus and trainers stands ready to show us how to go about the business of life.

One way that people are encouraged to manage the risks of involvement is through what some sociologists call “cultural cooling”.

Numerous experts and self-help books advise people to lower their expectations and not to get carried away by love. Love is increasingly denounced as a risky delusion. Even the Government has joined the “cool it” brigade, from warning teenagers of the risks that romance poses to their self-esteem to involving itself in marriage guidance, to worrying about the point at which a “stormy relationship” may turn into domestic violence.

Although most people still crave intimate relations, the association with danger has taken its toll. Detachment appears to offer protection from emotional pain. Men and women foolhardy enough to fall in love are encouraged to manage the expanding levels of perceived risks. A variety of tactics, from prenuptial agreements to cultivating the virtues of solo living, are used to manage the risks associated with the troublesome experience of love and passion. Sober realism overwhelms the magic of passionate intimacy.

One consequence of this worldview is that society lowers its expectations of intimate relationships. Backed by Government, the entire relationship industry is devoted towards cooling passions. The advice may be well meant, but it turns people off. Without passion and spontaneity, personal relations will turn into the kind of pragmatic transactions that dominate the market place. No intelligent person would want to commit his or her life to such a banal and unrewarding affair. It is not difficult to understand why so many opt for the studio flat with the ready-meal for one. Set against the prospect of a risky but unrewarding commitment, the prospect of living alone is an attractive one.

There is, of course, nothing new about warning individuals against the unrealistic expectation of romantic attachments. However, in our time, the desire for passionate love and the exhilaration of intimacy, as well as the painful disappointment of intimate loss, have been recast as symptoms of a disease.

But surely, this is what our life is all about. Instead of seeking a treatment for it, we should try living it.

FRANK FUREDI

Professor Frank Furedi, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent. Therapy Culture by Frank Furedi is published by Routledge at £14.99. To order your copy at £11.99 + £1.95 p&p call Times Books Direct on 0870 160 8080 or visit www.timesonline.co.uk/booksdirect