We’re frequently in the dark about whether someone we’re interested in “likes us back,” and we’re often not very good with our predictions. Of course, trying to read people's minds and decipher whether someone is attracted to you or not is no easy task, even within our normal social and romantic lives. People with erotomania misidentify expressions of love where they don't exist, reading into the facial expressions, gestures, or online social interactions of others in a way that suggests cognitive impairments related to "theory of mind"-the ability to discern what other people are thinking or feeling. The co-occurrence of erotomania with neuropsychological deficits raises the question of whether erotomania itself might be best understood as a kind of cognitive deficit, or even a misidentification syndrome. 7-10 Others have described co-occurrence with “misidentification syndromes,” like Capgras syndrome (in which sufferers have a delusion that people have been replaced by imposters) and Fregoli syndrome (in which individuals believe that a single person is taking on the appearance and identity of many others), which are thought to be rooted in problems with facial recognition and are often related to right hemisphere brain injuries. Some cases of erotomania have documented delusions that emerged after a stroke or a brain hemorrhage, in the setting of dementia, and along with neurocognitive deficits suggesting a link to dysfunction in the frontotemporal part of the brain. Freud theorized that erotomanic delusions were a psychological defense against unacceptable homosexual feelings, while others have suggested they might be a defense against the disappointment of rejection and unrequited love or the reality of a lonely, non-existent love life.
#I THINK LOVE IS BULLSHIT MANUAL#
Today, erotomania is recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as an example of delusional disorder, though it’s well known that erotomanic delusions can be found in other psychiatric conditions, like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, as well.Īnd yet, despite the syndrome being well-characterized for millennia, it remains unclear why some people develop erotomania. In 1921, a French psychiatrist published a paper detailing five cases such that erotomania became eponymously known as “De Clerambault’s syndrome” for many years. In psychiatry, the delusion that an individual firmly, but mistakenly believes that someone else is in love with them is called “erotomania.” Like my patient, the erotomanic individual often, though not always, believes that it’s a famous person who has fallen for them, despite the fact that they’ve had minimal or no real contact.īased on the delusion of love and their own reciprocal romantic feelings, those with erotomania sometimes go to great lengths to pursue their love interests, resulting in numerous well-publicized cases of celebrity stalking through the years, some of which-as with the stalkers of Jodie Foster, David Letterman, and the late Latin pop singer Selena Quintanilla-Perez-have ended in violent tragedy.Įrotomania has been documented at least as far back as the ancient Greeks, with Hippocrates and Galen describing the phenomenon several thousand years ago. When he was confronted with that reality, he couldn't be convinced, and at best sometimes angrily questioned why, if that was true, she'd led him on. The “communication” he’d had online consisted of finding hidden expressions of love within her social media posts that were in reality only general comments to fans, not anything romantic or specific to him. Not only was the actress not in love with him, she didn’t even know who he was. " Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." -Robert FrostĪ patient of mine recently came to Los Angeles, because he’d been communicating through social media with a well-known Hollywood actress who told him that she was in love with him and that they should be together. Source: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication
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