Examples of erotomania Someone listens for secret messages directed at them in their favorite musician's lyrics. A person spends their free time finding out everything they can about a famous actor, singer, or political figure that they believe loves them.
Behavior linked to erotomania includes persistent efforts to make contact through stalking, written communication, and other harassing behaviors. This can be accompanied by a belief that the object of the affection is sending secret, personal, and affirming messages back.
Erotomanic: People with this type of delusional disorder believe that another person, often someone important or famous, is in love with them. They may attempt to contact the person of the delusion and engage in stalking behavior.
Erotomania occurs when a person develops the delusional belief they are loved from afar by another person. Delusional love is generally intense, with rejections paradoxically interpreted as covert declarations of love. There is an association between erotomania and high-risk behavior, such as stalking.
In erotomania, the patient (subject) develops the delusional belief that they are loved from afar by another person (object). The subject is usually female, though males dominate forensic samples (e.g., in courts, prisons, or secure hospitals).
Obsessive Love Disorder is a psychological condition that presents as an overwhelming, obsessive desire to protect and possess another person.
Stress can trigger erotomania. If you've lost someone you were attached to, like a relative or close friend, you might search for a sense of safety in a powerful person. You may think they're “watching over” you.
Results: Neuropsychologic test results suggested that erotomania may be associated with deficits in cognitive flexibility and associative learning that are mediated by frontal-subcortical systems, and with deficits in verbal and visuospatial skills. Neurologic studies suggested abnormalities in temporal areas.
Erotomania has a much higher prevalence in the female sex, and male Erotomania is a rare and probably underdiagnosed condition. Male Erotomania is only more prevalent in forensic samples, since male sex is one of the risk factors for violent behavior in this disorder.
As we described above, delusional jealousy is a psychiatric phenomenon in which an individual has a delusional belief that their spouse (or sexual partner) is being unfaithful [6]. It is also known as morbid jealousy, pathological jealousy, conjugal paranoia, or Othello syndrome [6].
Erotomania and Morbidly Infatuated
This type of stalker feels that the victim loves them even though they may not have had any contact with the victim. The stalker is usually paranoid, prefers suitors in a higher social class, and will repeatedly approach the victim.
The phenomenon of stalking has been linked with erotomania and describes the course of conduct in which one individual repeatedly intrudes upon another producing fear and distress. The intrusions can involve following, loitering nearby, maintaining surveillance and making approaches (Pathe & Mullen 1997).
Love can be a powerful and destabilizing experience. People often experience it as not wholly pleasant. You could say that ideas of romantic love are fundamentally delusional because the beliefs associated with romantic love just don't correspond with reality.
A person with delusions, however, often has complete certainty and conviction about their delusory beliefs. They resist arguments and evidence that they are wrong. People have illusions about smell (olfactory), taste (gustatory), temperature (thermoceptive), and touch (tactile).
On the one hand, delusions are beliefs, i.e., thoughts which patients entertain and to which they give their full assent as being true. On the other hand, obsessions are thoughts, images or impulses invading patients' consciousness, without however being believed by them as true.
Erotomania is a form of delusional disorder in which an individual believes that another person, usually of higher status, is in love with him.
Do not reason, argue, or challenge the delusion. Attempting to disprove the delusion is not helpful and will create mistrust. Assure the person that they are safe and no harm will come.
People who have psychotic episodes are often totally unaware their behaviour is in any way strange or that their delusions or hallucinations are not real. They may recognise delusional or bizarre behaviour in others, but lack the self-awareness to recognise it in themselves.
Frequent questioning of a partner's behavior, in accusatory tones. Prohibiting the partner from having social media accounts or checking them secretly to see who they've been communicating with. Paranoia over who the partner is speaking with during phone calls or writing to in emails.
Delusions of grandeur are one of the more common ones. It's when you believe that you have more power, wealth, smarts, or other grand traits than is true. Some people mistakenly call it “illusions” of grandeur.