Erotomania, also known as de Clérambaults Syndrome, named after French psychiatrist Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, is listed in the DSM-5 as a subtype of a delusional disorder. It is a relatively uncommon paranoid condition that is characterized by an individuals delusions of another person being infatuated with them. This disorder is most often seen (though not exclusively) in female patients who are shy, dependent and sexually inexperienced. The object of the delusion is typically a male who is unattainable due to high social or financial status, marriage or uninterest. The object of obsession may also be imaginary, deceased or someone the patient has never met. Delusions of reference are common, as the erotomanic individual often perceives that they are being sent messages from the secret admirer through innocuous events such as seeing license plates from specific states, but has no proof. Commonly, the onset of erotomania is sudden, and the course is chronic. Presentation
Erotomania is more common in women, but men are more likely to exhibit violent and stalker-like behaviors. The core symptom of the disorder is that the individual holds an unshakable belief that another person is secretly in love with them. In some cases, the person with the condition may believe several people at once are "secret admirers". Most commonly, the individual has delusions of being loved by an unattainable person who is usually an acquaintance or someone the person has never met.
The term "testicular feminization" was coined to reflect Morris observation that the testicles in these patients produced a hormone that had a feminizing effect on the body, a phenomenon now understood to be due to the inaction of androgens, and subsequent aromatization of testosterone into estrogen. A few years before Morris published his landmark paper, Lawson Wilkins had shown through experiment that unresponsiveness of the target cell to the action of androgenic hormones was a cause of "male pseudohermaphroditism". Wilkins work, which clearly demonstrated the lack of a therapeutic effect when 46,XY patients were treated with androgens, caused a gradual shift in nomenclature from "testicular feminization" to "androgen resistance". Other names
A distinct name has been given to many of the various presentations of AIS, such as Reifenstein syndrome (1947), Goldberg-Maxwell syndrome (1948), Morris syndrome (1953), Gilbert-Dreyfus syndrome (1957), Lubs syndrome (1959), "incomplete testicular feminization" (1963), Rosewater syndrome (1965), and Aimans syndrome (1979).