Erotomania: Delusional Love

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Erotomania: The Erotomanic could become

a very dangerous person

De Clerambault’s syndrome (Named after Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, who published a comprehensive review paper on the subject in 1921), or Erotomania, is obsessive, paranoid and unrequited love for a person that either completely doesn’t know the Erotomanic, or barely knows them. It’s a cause of stalking, and even murder.

The Erotomanic believes that they’re loved by the person in return, and are being told so in secret ways, such as body positions or secret looks, or if it’s a famous person, in media.

It’s not to be confused with unrequited, obsessive love.

 

erotomania stalking and obsessive love a crush to far

 

Erotomania in the movies

The movie Eye Of The Stalker deals with the story of a college student who’s professor believes that they are in a strong relationship, and that she returns his obsessive affection, and her mother is the one keeping them apart.

The delusion that the object of their affection must keep their love secret because of their peers, colleagues, or family is extremely common with Erotomania, and may even kill the people they believe to be ‘in the way’ of their perceived relationship.

It’s been re-defined a few times, defined until the early eighteenth century as ‘a disease caused by unrequited love’, then again in the early eighteenth century as ‘the practice of excessive physical love’ (Similar to nymphomania or satyriasis.). In the early nineteenth century, it was redefined again as ‘Unrequited love in the form of a mental disease’, and in the eary twentieth century, it was given it’s modern definition as ‘the delusional belief of being loved by someone else’.

It’s a monomania, which means it can be the only mental problem in an otherwise rational and normal mind, though, it can also be caused by other mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia.

Irrational, paranoid and more

Erotomanic’s decisions become more irrational, obsessive, impulsive, paranoid, and/or even psychotic as they believe the relationship to be developing further. They often start to believe that everything is a sign of the person loving them, and that the person is being manipulated into doing things against them by people around them. The Erotomanic often believe that their love interest started the ‘relationship’.

There are some hints that it could be caused by a brain hemorrhage, as in The Journal Of Neuropsychiatry And Clinical Neurosciences 1998, perhaps by interfering with the emotional region of the brain, as shown in a case study here.

In evolutionary psychology, it’s explained as a ‘pathological variant of a long-term mating strategy’, and Psychology Today has the key statistics on an article, stating that almost 70% of patients with Erotomania are female, and female suffers most often had older male ‘love’ interests, who had high social statuses, but with males their female victims tend to be sexually attractive and younger than them. Erotomanics make up approximately 10% of all stalkers, and coincidentally each Erotomanic episode lasts about 10 years.

Erotomanic stalkers are rare, but definitely not unheard of, and can become very dangerous.

Psychiatry Online has a very good article here on female stalkers, involving Erotomanic, with lots of lovely statistics and studies, and PsychNews has an article about Doreen Orion, who was stalked by a schizophrenic and suicidal female patient.

About Post Author

Misa Akane

Being an unmotivated writer, I spend hours a week in therapy that does me no good, and the rest of it trying to find inspiration, and ending up playing with small prehistoric figurines in a realistic manner or baking several things at three in the morning. The rest of the time I tend to spend trying to find something to do with my life other than that, and end up doing it all again.
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2 years ago

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[…] There you will find 91766 more Infos: madmikesamerica.com/2011/06/erotomania-delusional-love/ […]

Kim
5 years ago

This is a wonderfully written article. I have only one minor correction: Stephen Primes, in “Eye of the Stalker” was not Beth’s instructor. He angled to meet her after a period of spying on her through his leased classroom window. She never took any of his classes, as he was a freelance law professor.

Anyway, otherwise, thank you for this. 🙂

DingoTime
11 years ago

Sweet! I just studied this! Not to refute what you’ve put down, but I’ve read several case studies in which: the erotomanic episode lasts the lifetime of the studied patient, the erotomanic episode ends and is transferred to someone else after a short stage of resentment, and the erotomanic episode is slowly cured through tranquilizers.

Just thought it was worthy of note that erotomania may manifest in many different ways. Thanks for the article!

Reply to  DingoTime
11 years ago

Thanks for your kind comments.

12 years ago

Very, very interesting, and just a little scary.

12 years ago

Fascinating article–thanks for the post!

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