Home > International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis > Erotomania

Erotomania, the ''delusion of being loved,'' is a morbid fascination that is clinically classified as a form of delusion, accompanied by insistent demands and jealousy. Emil Kraepelin associates it with the paranoid psychoses and Sigmund Freud interprets it psychoanalytically (1911c [1910]). For Freud the inverse projection of erotomania serves as a defensive function against latent homosexuality:

Another element is chosen for contradiction in erotomania, which remains totally unintelligible on any other view: 'I do not love him—I love her.' And in obedience to the same need for projection, the proposition is transformed into: 'I observe that she loves me.' 'I do not love him—I love her, because SHE LOVES ME.' Many cases of erotomania might give an impression that they could be satisfactorily explained as being exaggerated or distorted heterosexual fixations, if our attention were not attracted by the circumstance that these infatuations invariably begin, not with any internal perception of loving, but with an external perception of being loved. But in this form of paranoia the intermediate proposition 'I love her' can also become conscious, because the contradiction between it and the original proposition is not a diametrical one, not so irreconcilable as that between love and hate: it is, after all, possible to love her as well as him. It can thus come about that the proposition which has been substituted by projection ('she loves me') may make way again for the 'basic language' proposition 'I love her' (1911c [1910], pp. 63–64).

The initial core can be traced back to the narcissistic root through idealization (projection of the subject's ideal ego), split personality, and double bind situations.

In 1920 Gatian de Clérambault defined his conception of erotomanic delusion in a letter to the Société; Clinique de Médecine Mentale (Clinical society of mental medicine) as the ''coexistence of two delusions: persecution and erotomania.'' In 1921 he isolated ''pure erotomania'' within the context of emotional delusion. This emotional syndrome, which is generated by feelings of pride, desire, and hope, revolves around a ''fundamental postulate'': ''It is the object that began and that loves the most or that loves alone.'' This revelation, generally found in women, initiates the phase of hope. A number of topics are derived from this, for example, the belief that ''the object cannot experience happiness without being loved.'' From then on their protection, their efforts at closeness, and indirect manifestations of their love are combined with paradoxical behavior patterns. Interpreted as hardships and especially as demonstrations of love, they appear as persecutory during the stages of spite and bitterness that are part of a chronic, persistent development. The associated erotomania is a fluid entity, an expression of a paranoid, a schizophrenic psychiatric condition.

In spite of our clinical (found in DSM IV) and psychopathological understanding, there have been few Clinique de Me therapeutic advances for such patients, who are often intrusive and consequently rarely succeed in attracting attention for very long.

MICHEL DEMANGEAT

See also: Delusion; Mathilde, case of; Paranoia; Passion; Persecution; ''Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)''; Psychoses, chronic and delusional.