The two volumes of this work correspond to Daniel Lagache's PhD thesis, presented in 1947. The subheading (Descriptive Psychology and Psychoanalysis) clearly states Lagache's intention of producing a study at the intersection of his experience and multidisciplinary training as a philosopher, psychiatrist, psychologist, and psychoanalyst.

Lagache conducted an exhaustive study of the different authors who dealt with the question of jealousy. His work was based on fifty essentially personal clinical cases, most of them in institutions, and a few cases of analytic treatment for which he presents an ample amount of material. In the first volume he sets out to describe and classify states of jealousy; the second deals with jealousy as it is actually experienced.

"Amorous jealousy derives from a conflict between jealous (possessive) love and reality, jealous love constituting a demand for total and exclusive possession...