[Erotomania or the delusional conviction of being loved. Contribution to the psychopathology of the love life].

Identified and described 150 years ago, the delirious conviction of being loved, or erotomania, is probably more frequent (in his less spectacular forms) in the private practice, than in the psychiatric services. The critical examination of the literature permits to classify this peculiar clinical-psychological entity as paranoid psychoses, or as sensitive characteropathias of the the Kretschmer-type, finally as an exaggerated-rediculous form of the intra-specific struggle for the conquest of a sexual partner. The pathogenesis of erotomania is yet under discussion. The psycho-analytic conception invoking the rejection or denegation of a latent homosexuality is yet not demonstrated. Six personal cases (three women, two of them being married, and three single men) are related as a contribution to the study of the yet debated problem of erotomania.