Stalking, sometimes referred to as erotomania, is a subject that attracts fascination and fear, often portrayed in its most dramatic and extreme form in films and novels. While intense infatuation is a state of mind we have all encountered, particularly when first in love, the continued state of pursuit and obsession of another person who has rebuffed our advances can move beyond acceptable limits of human behaviour.
Chasing the unattainable is something that we can all imagine, especially when that elusive object offers the promise of longed-for bliss and fulfillment. Classified in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual V as a subtype of delusional disorder, erotomania, or de Clérambault’s syndrome, refers to the belief that someone is in love with us, when they are not, and continuing in this delusion, often through taking actions to contact that person. It is both unusual as a condition, and familiar as a state of mind.
As a clinician who has treated women and men with erotic obsession that borders on the delusional and moves into dangerous territory, I am particularly interested in the early attachment experiences of those who end up stalking, and the reactions of their victims—the objects of their preoccupations. There is a fine line between “ordinary” infatuation or limerance, and obsessive stalking, where the organising principles of daily life are focussed on real or imagined contact with the loved one through tracing their movements, studying their social media posts, or creating fantasy encounters.
The relationship between stalker and stalked is one that is far more nuanced than sometimes appreciated. The degrees of ambiguity are hard to bear in mind when prosecuting someone who has gone too far, overstepped essential boundaries, and threatened the object of their obsession or their family, whom they view as standing in their way. The delusional aspects of erotomaniac obsession often have a basis in fact, in that the person they believe they are destined to be with, who is forced by circumstance to keep them at a distance (or so they believe), may well have dated them once, had sex with them, or simply shown them kindness.
For some I have treated, the obsession has not caused harm to others but has caused them extreme levels of distress. A young woman who was fixated on a musician and went to every concert of his in the UK, only to read about his engagement in the papers and go into a deep depression, felt devastated, betrayed, and furious with his fiancée, as though she had stolen something that belonged to her alone.
Then there are the delusions that turn dangerous, sometimes leading to lifelong destruction for both the stalker and the stalked. There’s, for instance, the lonely woman who developed delusions about the texts that she had sent her one-time date, believing he was posting them all over the internet. She was convinced he had asked her to marry him, had got a tattoo of her initials on his arm, and was obsessed with her. She ignored signs that he was ignoring her calls and clearly did not want a relationship with her. Convinced that he was entrapped by another woman, she became terrified that she was losing her one and only true love, unaware that what she was losing was her mind—her hold on reality. She stopped working, eating, drinking, or tending to her son, now in her mother’s care. Her days were filled with thoughts of him. Eventually, the pain of her rejection and the fear that she was losing her one chance of happiness turned into anger, and a plan to act. Thoughts of revenge now overwhelmed her and became an organising force. She saw a man who looked like him, another she thought was receiving his dark messages, and aimed her moving car towards them. Both men were seriously injured, and she was sentenced to jail, her dreams shattered.
Losing custody of her child, career, and the fantasy of romantic love left her hopeless and depressed. Despite this, she held onto the firm belief that her beloved had been obsessed with her, was tracking her movements, and was in love with her. She was devastated that he had, suddenly and without warning, dropped her. That they had only dated once was irrelevant, as her delusions about who was stalking whom left her in the web of falsehoods in which she was now ensnared. Trapped in this, she would never regain health or see the horror of what she had done. Without insight, she could not own up to the fact that she had acted without mercy or restraint, and it was only months later, with specialist psychological and psychiatric treatment, that she relinquished the delusion. Psychotherapeutic treatment revealed her early attachment disturbances but came too late to save her from inflicting serious harm on her victims, and ultimately herself and her son.
For some, erotomania provides an animating reason for living with dramatic urgency. But it can also be seen as a desperate attempt to meet unmet needs from childhood or a fantasy of securing unconditional love. Research has suggested that people who stalk others have insecure attachment styles, mostly of the preoccupied variety, with real difficulties in forming and maintaining intimate relationships and a terror of abandonment. The need to maintain contact with the beloved person, whether a real or fantasy figure, becomes desperate. For those who have been in relationships with the object of their obsession who has now left them, stalking is a form of coercive control, forcing contact where none is wanted.
Frightening as it is to recognise, we may all have the capacity to become the hunters as well as the hunted, under the guise of romantic love. If we find ourselves caught up in an obsessive fixation to the extent that it shapes our daily lives, creating violent fantasies about revenge or exclusive possession and driving obsessive behaviour such as tracking, following, or excessive and unwanted contacts, we have left the realm of ordinary infatuation and will need urgent help to lead us onto safe ground.
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