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During this election, frequently sighted at Obama rallies were women falling into a faint. These occurrences became so common that Obama would throw a bottle of water to the woman or routinely ask for medical care. Women weren’t just fainting from the heat or dehydration—they were fainting with love.
Obsessive love for someone you don’t know is called “erotomania.” This is a longstanding category that dates from the time of the ancients. It was known as unrequited love or erotomania (“raving love”). Love sickness of this sort was linked to physical ailments and psychic distress. Called amor heroes in the 12th century by physicians, and “erotic melancholy” by Robert Burton, by the Renaissance it was seen as “a somatic disease of inflamed and congested genitals leading to disordered fantasy.” As André Du Laurens wrote in the sixteenth century, “the sillie loving worme cannot any more look upon any thing but his idol: al the functions of the bodie are likewise perverted, he becommeth pale, lean, souning.”
Has a considerable portion of the US and world become enamored with Barack Obama? Our craze for celebrity is in many cases a form of erotomania, with many of us having crushes on people that we have never met and never will meet.
But what happens when our obsessive love object begins to disappoint us? Stalkers can be erotomaniacs whose objects of desire reject them. Then obsessive love turns to obsessive attempts to get the attention of the lost object. Admiration can turn to hostility.
In the past few days, there has been a new emotional theme in the opinion pieces about Barack Obama and his choice of cabinet staff. Is Barack beginning to disappoint us by picking former Clinton appointees who are not connected with the message of “change?”
I’ve noticed in political writing the faint beginnings of what might become stalker rage. I am wondering if we need to wonder what happens when the fainting women turn into disappointed erotomaniacs who begin to haunt our President-elect in less supine and more actively angry ways. Can a fainting erotomaniac turn into a devoted voter wronged? Hell hath no fury, apparently.
