‘Every moment is the last because it is unique.’ –Marguerite Yourcenar
Erotomania is a type of delusion in which the affected person believes that another person, usually a stranger, is in love with him or her.
The illness often occurs during psychosis, especially in patients with schizophrenia or bipolar mania.
Erotomania is also called de Clérambault’s syndrome, after the French psychiatrist Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934).
The term erotomania is often confused with obsessive love, obsession with unrequited love, or hypersexuality (hypersexuality replaces the older concepts of nymphomania (furor uterinus) and satyriasis.).
The Reagan assassination attempt occurred in Washington, D.C. on Monday, March 30, 1981.
President Reagan and three others were shot and wounded by John Hinckley, Jr. with a .22-caliber pistol.
Reagan was the first serving United States president to survive being shot in an assassination attempt.
{ Reagan assassination attempt | Wikipedia | Continue reading | Google Images | Related: In a 1982 speech, President Ronald Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to America’s national security, putting a too-literal gloss on the phrase “war on drugs.” }
The motivation behind Hinckley’s attack stemmed from an obsession with actress Jodie Foster due to erotomania. While living in Hollywood in the late 1970s, he saw the film Taxi Driver at least 15 times, apparently identifying strongly with Travis Bickle, the lead character.
Hinckley arrived in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, March 29, getting off a Greyhound Lines bus and checking into the Park Central Hotel. He had breakfast at McDonald’s the next morning, noticed U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s schedule on page A4 of the Washington Star, and decided it was time to make his move.
Knowing that he might not live to tell about shooting Reagan, Hinckley wrote (but did not mail) a letter to Foster about two hours prior to the assassination attempt, saying that he hoped to impress her with the magnitude of his action.
{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | The Trial of John Hinckley, 1982 | Hinckley bought two identical .22-caliber revolvers in Rocky’s Pawn Shop in Dallas on Oct. 3, 1980 | Photos: John Hinckley, Jr. | Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. }
