This 150 -page book, published in 1979, has excited great interest all over the world. In Italy alone it has gone through 45 editions and sold over a million copies. Its success depends on the fact of its being the first study on falling in love since Stendhal's famous De l'amour of 1832.

A 400-page volume, it is the most complete and systematic of Alberoni's works on the love theme. The processes or mechanisms that create love bonds are of four types. The first is the pleasure principle. We bond with those who give us pleasure.