The erotomaniac individual’s love is of a platonic nature. Erotomania constitutes a diseased form of ideal love. The physical sexual appetite is generally foreign to the erotomaniac. The object of the individual’s love occupies the mind only. It is a continual obsession of the spirit. The erotomaniac individual makes an abstraction of the physical personality of the adored. It is pursuing an ideal. The erotomaniac is the victim of a mental exaltation which moves the lover to write poetry and love-letters to the object of his or her dreams, without ever sending them off. If possible the erotomaniac follows his or her lover, but never addresses a word to him or her. The erotomaniac wishes to be in possession of the beloved being, to be wedded to the beloved one, but it never thinks of the sensual part. It is after the mental possession of the beloved one.
The love of the erotomaniac individual rests upon a vague and hazy ideal. It is the purest love possible. The relation is sacred and beautiful. It is a kind of cult. The beloved object is a divinity whom the patient worships upon his or her knees and whom he and she takes care not to profane even by a carnal kiss.
The following case of a fellow-worker in the pathological institute of a university in Switzerland is not uninstructive in this respect:
While working over the microscope at the same table, the young physician told the author the following story of his life when he was a boy of sixteen. He was at that time attending college in a middle-sized city in Germany. One day a college friend took him to his home, where he saw his friend’s sister, a young lady of twenty-three years of age, and immediately fell in love with her.
Although he was, already at that time, far enough advanced in the ways of the world to see the hopelessness of his love, still the incongruity between the ideal and reality was entirely forgotten. He was altogether oblivious of the material world and imagined himself floating in the realms of the spirits, while dreaming of exquisite harmonies.
Day and night he saw before him the object of his adoration. He was filled with ecstasy over her perfection which was greatly exaggerated and only existed in his imagination. For now, with a clearer judgment, he can see distinctly that she must have had noticed at that time his childish emotions and, out of vanity, was somewhat playing with them. In his diaries he finds pledges of perennial veneration and worship and vows of eternal resignation. His memoirs are filled with descriptions of his hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, wishes and despairs.
While in her company, he became entirely unconscious of the flight of time; when she was talking about the most trivial incidents, he imagined that he was listening to the music of the spheres. Every word, every motion of her was able to awaken in him either excessive joy and excitement or to throw him into a state of despair and rob him of his appetite and sleep for a number of days.
Happily, the young lady soon married a judge, and this marriage broke the boy’s spell. It may be added that the hero of our story, now a promising pathologist, is still of a very nervous temperament, and though possessed of a strictly logical mind, he loves to frequent spiritualistic séances and to participate in spiritualistic practices.
The erotomaniac woman shows often characteristics not always found in men. She is generally well satisfied with herself and extremely vain. She is, as a rule, in love with a person of high social and intellectual position. He is a prince, a celebrated statesman, a victorious general, a famous actor, a brilliant preacher, or a great scientist. In religious mania, it is not seldom a saint who inspires the erotomaniac woman with a chaste love. Sometimes a picture or a statue may become the object of her adoration.
As a general rule, the wish for the possession of a certain man is provoked by his character, by his intellectual, moral or physical qualities. If the man she fancies fails to attain to the standard of her ideals she nevertheless attributes to him all the charms her mind is able to conjure up. A case recorded by Reuardin is a good example of erotomania in women.
The patient, a well-educated lady, thirty-two years of age, notices some time after her marriage a man of higher social standing than her husband. She at once falls in love with this man, begins to grumble at her low social position, and speaks of her husband only with contempt. Her beloved one only has all the best qualities. No one is above him. She writes letters to him, in which she reveals the most ardent passion and, at the same time, the chastest emotions. Sometimes she is found in ecstasy, with eyes fixed upon some chimerical vision, the pupils in a state of hallucination and the lips murmuring the beloved one’s name. She recoils from her husband’s caresses, refuses to share his bed, to sit near him, speak to him and to see him. Her whole life is centered in her love; her eyes are constantly fixed upon the beloved image. Finally she becomes entirely insufferable and commits so many extravagances that her husband is forced to separate from her and later on to send her to an asylum.
Ball distinguishes two categories of erotomaniacs. Some are discreet lovers. They never accost the object of their love and do not even feel the need to approach the divine hearth, whence the spark started that inflamed their hearts. It is a pure immaterial fire that feeds on itself. The other category, the indiscreet lovers, feel the necessity to impart the knowledge of their passion to the object that gave it rise.
Satyriasis and nymphomania.—Contrary to erotomania, the sexual impulse in satyriasis and in nymphomania is directed upon the physical side of love. In these cases the impulse of detumescence is greatly increased. The desires are directed upon the physical, pleasurable titillations of the sexual organs.
The dividing line between the normal and pathological increase of libido is not readily found. The libido sexualis normally varies in different individuals. Married life bridles, as a rule, sexual desire, while intercourse with different persons increases it. Total sexual abstinence may cause in certain individuals, with a neurotic taint, increased sexual desire, continuous excitement, diseased, unconquerable impulse for sexual congress, and the preoccupation of the entire attention upon the sensual act.