China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Psychoanalytic aspects of the fitness for duty psychological evaluation 1
Published in Jed A. Yalof, Anthony D. Bram, Psychoanalytic Assessment Applications for Different Settings, 2020
In this regard, it helps to reflect on the observation that erotomania, although marked by grievous mis-steps down a proverbial “rabbit hole” of the mind, nonetheless emerges from that universal experience about which the bards and poets speak, that is, love. Love and its gifts are the ground of human existence. For Freud, love was half of the famous dictum “to love and work” (Erikson, 1950/1993), and love is the currency of British object relations theorists like Winnicott (1965) and figural in contemporary psychodynamic attachment theory.9 Scholars and artists alike have long recognized the preeminence of love in the panoply of human experience, an emotion inextricably connected with self, longing, and loss. Erotomania is a derivative maladaptation of love wherein the psychodynamics of blind spots, narcissism, and shame impinge on select areas of ego functioning (Kelly, 2018; Bortolotti, 2015; McKay, Langdon, & Coltheart, 2005). Shakespeare (1600/2005) said, “love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit” (Merchant of Venice, 2.6.36). Love, fears of loss, the desire to be special, jealousy, wishes to control the fate of relationships and forestall grief—these can be psychological building blocks of erotomania.
De Clérambault’s syndrome
Published in David Enoch, Basant K. Puri, Hadrian Ball, Uncommon Psychiatric Syndromes, 2020
David Enoch, Basant K. Puri, Hadrian Ball
Cases have been recorded in the literature in which erotomanic symptomatology and syndromes have occurred in association with such coarse brain diseases as Alzheimer’s disease, HIV infection, brain damage and a left frontal lobe tumour (Drevets, 1987; Boast and Coid, 1994; John and Ovsiew, 1996; Stupinski et al., 2017). A useful review of the several reported cases of erotomania associated with neurological and medical conditions has been conducted by Anderson et al. (1998). Such examples, however, form a small minority of all cases recorded and, in aetiological terms, de Clérambault syndrome behaves like a functional psychosis.
Questions and Answers
Published in David Browne, Brenda Wright, Guy Molyneux, Mohamed Ahmed, Ijaz Hussain, Bangaru Raju, Michael Reilly, MRCPsych Paper I One-Best-Item MCQs, 2017
David Browne, Brenda Wright, Guy Molyneux, Mohamed Ahmed, Ijaz Hussain, Bangaru Raju, Michael Reilly
Answer: B. Erotomania is considered a delusion of being loved, generally by someone of superior social status, and is more common in females. Ekbom’s syndrome has also been called delusional parasitosis. Othello syndrome is characterised by delusions of jealousy and infidelity. Capgras’ syndrome and Fregoli syndrome are both delusions of misidentification. [D. pp. 117–18]
The de Clérambault syndrome: more than just a delusional disorder?
Published in International Review of Psychiatry, 2020
Gaia Sampogna, Francesca Zinno, Vincenzo Giallonardo, Mario Luciano, Valeria Del Vecchio, Andrea Fiorillo
de Clérambault (1913) described six cases of pure erotomania and five cases of secondary (or associated) erotomania. However, these studies were published after de Clérambault’s death (which – incidentally – occurred by suicide) and his scholars decided to use the eponym of ‘de Clérambault’s syndrome’ for the erotomanic delusional syndrome. Emil Kraepelin considered erotomania a subtype of paranoia, differentiating it from dementia praecox (schizophrenia) and manic-depressive insanity. He found that affected patients were usually young women, which moved from the phase of being loved through the phase of ‘dreamy hallucinations’, to the inevitable obstacles and disappointments of the love affair (Segal, 1989). Along the years, other definitions of erotomania include ‘les psychoses passionelles’, phantom lover syndrome, delusional loving, erotomania, melancholie erotique, amor insanus, old maid’s insanity and paranoia erotica. All these definitions underline the idea that erotomania represents a distinct psychopathological construct, which deserves an in-depth clinical and psychopathological observation. However, with the nosological reductionism of recent years, the work of de Clérambault has been neglected and almost forgotten by modern psychiatrists and erotomania is now simply defined as a delusional belief of ‘being loved by someone else’ (Berrios & Kennedy, 2002).