Erotomania - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Examples of de Clerambault's syndrome (erotomania) in fiction include Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love, which was later turned into a film also called Enduring Love; the American movies Fatal Attraction and The Bodyguard, the Portuguese film O Fantasma (2001) and the French films Anna M. (2007) and Laetitia Colombani's À la folie... pas du tout (2002). Psychiatrist Dr. Jan Falkowski was stalked by a woman who suffered from this condition, a case which became the basis of the film U Be Dead, .

Linda Fairstein's first Alexandra Cooper novel, Final Jeopardy, features an erotomaniac woman who stalks and kills a movie star she perceives as standing between her and the object of her infatuation. The book was later made into a television movie starring Dana Delany, also entitled Final Jeopardy.

The band Dream Theater has a song titled "Erotomania", which is the first of a three part suite titled A Mind Beside Itself.

The television series Criminal Minds featured the condition of erotomania as the basis of the plot for the episodes "Broken Mirror", "Somebody's Watching" and "The Crossing". The episode "Nothing But The Night" in the series Wire in the Blood, also features a female stalker suffering from de Clerambault's, and is diagnosed by the series' main character who is also the person being stalked, psychologist Dr. Tony Hill.

On Law & Order it is the topic of episode Animal Instinct in which Frances Fisher plays a woman who is diagnosed an erotomaniac. It is also seen in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit season 3 episode 17 - "Surveillance".

In the manga series One Piece, the villain of the Fishman Island Arc Vander Decken IX shows erotomania towards the Mermaid Princess Shirahoshi. Fully believing she is in love with him, and her father locked her up and wants to use her marriage for political reasons. Where in reality she is utterly terrified of him and her father locked her up to protect her from Decken as he regularly attempts to kill her.

In the film Swimfan Madison is shown to be obsessed with the main character Ben, to the point she tries to ruin everything in his life from his swim team, to his girlfriend, and even framing him for murder in a delusional attempt to get him to be with her. It is also revealed this has happened more than once, as she did similar to a boy named Jake, suggesting she caused a car crash which left him in a coma and she got out without a scratch.

The ITV television crime drama Lewis explicitly references de Clerambault's syndrome in the season five episode The Mind Has Mountains.

The 2002 French film "À la folie... pas du tout" ("He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not") recounts the story of a young woman with erotomania obsessed with her neighbor.

Hong Kong drama A Great Way To Care (2009) has a case on erotomanic telephone salesman Gary obsessed with a psychiatrist.

In the 2010 Singaporean drama serial The Family Court, we have the main villain Danni (Ann Kok) with erotomania, obsessed with her ex-boyfriend Xiping (Tay Ping Hui) and targeting his fiancee Shuya (Chris Tong) to kill her.

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