“Filiation Erotomania” in an Adopted Child: The Adolescence of an Adopted Child with Borderline Personality Disorder Complicated by Passionate Delusion

Erotomania described by De Clérambault has been the object of numerous descriptions and has many variants in its clinical expression. It can be primary or secondary, homo or heterosexual, with more or less prominent delusional conviction. We report in this article the case of an adopted adolescent where psychological disturbances were expressed through what we wish to qualify as filiation erotomania even though the clinical picture might be well explained by a borderline personality disorder. The beginning of the psycho-pathological disorders goes back to the start of the patient's adolescence, which was marked by a serious illness suffered by her adoptive mother. At the time, the oncologists' prognosis was extremely poor with a high chance of fatality within a very short period. The remission and therefore survival of the mother did not amend the patient’s psychological disorders, which only worsened and finally were expressed through an association of mythomaniac confabulations and stalking behaviors. Passionate expectations directed towards female figures in her life developed in the context of an initial conviction that she had a privileged filial relation with them. Phases of hope, resentment and then bitterness repeated themselves. The abandoning of one erotomanic relation was followed by its rapid replacement by another. The questions of double filiation, adoptive and biological, of the process of adolescence and of anticipated mourning are discussed.