The dictionary definition of monomania is an excessive intellectual preoccupation with a thing or idea. The term “monomania” originated from the Greek word monos, which refers to mania, but also to an agitated state. The definition introduced above indicates that there are species and varieties of monomania which correspond to the faculties and phases of the human mind or its combinations.
The significance of the diagnosis of moral madness and associated diagnosis of monomania (manie sans delire) found its way in the development of psychiatry in the 19th century. Moral madness in court It is important to note that the terms “moral madness” and “monomania” have been used in the courts, but not always in the precise manner proposed in medical treatises. A version of the defense of insanity was used in the late 19th century in a number of interesting cases, such as Wiener (1999), but the specific defense mechanisms of moral insanity and monomania were not applied. The explicit and unmistakable concept of partial madness was propagated by Pinel’s pupil Esquirol and his own followers, as well as by some of the monomaniacs.
In nineteenth-century psychiatry, monomania was a form of partial madness conceived as a single pathological occupation of the healthy mind. Monomania is a state of mind that intrigues in a way that is not unusual. Those who suffer from it are busy with something or someone.
Monomania retained one of seven recognized categories of mental illness in the US census of 1880, but its importance as a psychiatric diagnostic category lowered in the mid-nineteenth century. Monomania is a condition in which the sufferer is so focused on an idea or feeling that it is impossible to function normally. Emotional monomania, in which a patient is possessed by one or more associated emotions, and intellectual monomania, which is related to some kind of delirious idea.
Prichard deviated from Pinel’s view of monomania when he saw that the disorder affected the sufferer’s character, rather than concealing a certain form of insanity. The verdict of literary criticism and medical art is that he is mad to the point of madness and pretends to be, but he deceives himself, and the world will never know. Monomania is a partial madness that leaves most of the intellect undamaged, a mental illness that affects only one aspect of the mind.
Monomania originated in the works of Jean-Etienne Esquirol (1770-1840) and the Parisian asylum of the 1790s, but its imaginative French origins meant that it faced hostility from pragmatic and theoretical British alike. Monomania was a nebulous notion to many, and the jurors at the Edward Daviess insanity hearing restored his freedom and good name. The Monomania debate was one of the many great battlegrounds of the 19th-century classification system.
In psychiatry, monomania (from the Greek monos delusion of unity, mania ) is a form of paranoia in which the patient only has one idea or kind of idea. In this derivative sense, madness means foolish madness and despair. Madness is an old popular term common to madness in the broadest sense, but any suggestion of excitement is like mania.
The difference between monomania and passion can be subtle and difficult to discern. An unhealthy elevation of feeling or caution, for example, whether it means fear of death, panic, or phobia, is a symptom of heart disease or a large blood vessel, while monomaniacal ambition or optimism, whatever it may be, goes hand in hand with the general paralysis of the mentally ill. Like many mental and emotional disorders, a person with Monomania can be convinced that the rest of the world is going mad even though he is completely healthy.