In psychiatry, monomania (from Greek monos, one, and mania, mania) is a type of paranoia in which the patient has only one idea or type of ideas. Emotional monomania is that in which the patient is obsessed with only one emotion or several related to it; intellectual monomania is that which is related to only one kind of delirious idea or ideas.

In colloquial terms, the term monomania is often attached to subcultures that to the general public appear esoteric. Hence terms like fanboy, anorak, otaku and so forth. The difference between monomania and passion can be very subtle and difficult to recognize.

Monomania in literature

The 19th century writer Edgar Allan Poe would often write tales in which the narrator and protagonist would suffer some form of monomania, becoming excessively fixated on an idea, an urge, an object, or a person, often to the point of mental and/or physical destruction.

An important book about monomania is Edgar Alan Poe's "The Black Cat and other stories" which includes:

1. The Black Cat (a man fears his cat and kills it, adopts another cat, kills his wife, and is then punished by the cat)
2. The Oval Portrait (about a painter who is obsessed with painting his wife)
3. Bérenice (about a madman who wants to marry his sick cousin only for her beautiful teeth)
4. The Red Death (a prince fears a terrible disease but finally gets ill from the red death and dies)

It is said that Flaubert's hatred of the bourgeois and their bêtise (willful idiocy), that began in his childhood, developed into a kind of monomania.

Monomanie | Monomanie | Мономания