Erotomania

Erotomania, also known as Clérambaul Syndrome, is a form of paranoid delirium in which the patient is completely sure that he or she has an impossible love relationship with a person who is generally in a higher social position or who in some way is unreachable (he or she may be a well-known public figure on television, in politics, a doctor or even a priest, among many others). It thus imposes unwanted sexual attention on an innocent victim in a constant and persistent manner. This type of delirium produces that a person behavior who suffers it becomes stalking, and when the person sees that he or she cannot achieve his objective, ends up resentful and sad.

Related topics

Unrequited love, delusional disorder, paranoia

What is erotomania?

Erotomania is a mental disorder based on the paranoid delirium that a person presents and that is based on a person's confidence by having an impossible love relationship with a person who is in a greater social position and that is practically unattainable.

Erotomania from psychoanalysis can present 3 different phases: hope, disappointment and resentment. The erotomaniac is capable of investigating everything about the person object of desire and can get to know the person and do everything possible to provoke an encounter between the two, however, if in this encounter the erotomaniac does not get the person to confess his love, it is very possible that he enters depression, anger and disappointment.

Diagnosis of erotomania

Over time, psychologists and psychoanalysts have created certain diagnostic criteria to prove that a person suffers from pure erotomania, and these are:

• A delirious conviction to be in constant loving communication with another person.
• The person object of love belongs to a much higher rank than the person suffering from erotomania. That person has been the first to fall in love.
• That person is the first to approach.
• The beginning is sudden, from one day to the next, the person is in love with his impossible love.
• The object of love remains unchanged, for them there is nothing that can interfere with their feelings.
• The patient has an explanation for the paradoxical behavior of the person, has many excuses to explain why the other person does not follow in his footsteps or does not show his love.
• The course is chronic.

Causes of erotomania

Erotomaniac delirium is usually caused by affective, cerebral organic or schizophrenic disorders. It is accompanied by all sorts of hallucinations and leads the person to act according to his or her delirium, that is, as if that person were really in love with him or her. Currently, Clérambault’s Syndrome is included in the Classification Guides of Mental Diseases with the name of Erotomaniac Type Delirious Disorder. Other conditions that have been related to erotomania lately are major depression, paraphrenia, mental weakness, fragile X syndrome, Alzheimer’s, recurrent mania, hysterical psychosis and borderline personality disorder, all these pathologies can become a trigger of the disease.

Symptoms of erotomania

The conduct of delirium usually begins with stalking, high expectations and illusion that the person has of being able to attain the love of the other, which ends in great resentment.

There may be paranoid deliriums in which the person assures that he has managed to have a communication with the person with whom he is in love.

They have a fixation with the person to fill the emptiness they have in their lives through the other. They are capable of making intimate investigations of the person they love, even looking for a way to provoke an encounter between the two.

They are people who are filled with anger, depression and disappointment when they cannot reach their loving goals.

The age at which they usually appear is around 30 or older and occurs more in women than in men, especially those who are single.

They believe that the love story began at some point, although their delirious ideas revolve around a romantic relationship that has been idealized by themselves.

They often refer to the spiritual union that exists according to them, with their partner, who in the end is a victim of their deliriums.

Treatment of erotomania

The cure has its beginning with a psychological treatment and in some cases together with appropriate medications to help reduce delirium. However, many doctors who have studied some cases claim that even with antipsychotics, the condition is not completely eradicated. Some people manage to improve through these treatments, although according to experts, it takes many years to achieve improvement, even some of them never manage to overcome the problems that the pathology entails, especially in love and interpersonal relationships.