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Pure Erotomania in Manic-Depressive Psychosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Waguih R. Guirguis*
Affiliation:
St Clement's Hospital, Foxhall Road, Ipswich, IP3 8LS

Extract

Pure erotomania was first described in 1920 by the French psychiatrist de Clérembault. It is a delusional condition, usually in a woman who believes that a man, unattainable because of his much higher social class or married state, is very much in love with her. The belief has a precise onset and occurs suddenly in a state of clear consciousness. Enoch and his colleagues (1967) claim that ‘some instances of this syndrome may be distinct from ordinary paranoid psychoses and deserve a separate place in psychiatric nosology’, while Arieti thinks that it is not a clinical entity but a symptom of paranoia or paranoid schizophrenia (Arieti and Meth, 1959).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1981 

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References

Arieti, S. & Meth, M. (1959) American Handbook of Psychiatry, Vol. 1. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Clérambault, G G. De (1920) Les psychoses passionnelles. Reprinted 1942 in Clérambault, Ocuvre Psychiatrique. Paris: Presses Universitaires.Google Scholar
Enoch, M. D. Trethowan, W. H. & Barker, J. C. (1967) Some Uncommon Psychiatric Syndromes. Bristol: John Wright.Google Scholar
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