Stalking: Introduction, Definition, and Epidemiology

The 1990s witnessed the emergence of stalking as a new social construct that was recognized through the development of antistalking statutes. Simultaneously, stalking received widespread attention in the popular news media and in scholarly works by mental health professionals. Considerable variation exists among the legal, clinical, and research definitions of stalking. Large-scale epidemiological studies, conducted in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States, suggest that stalking is a relatively common behavior. Women have an 8–33% lifetime risk of being the victim of stalking, depending on the definition. For men, the lifetime risk is 2–7%. Studies on the epidemiology of stalking violence give a wide range of results: 3–46% of stalkers progress to violence. Higher rates of stalking have been reported among some populations, including college students, mental health clinicians, and celebrities. Female stalkers differ from male stalkers in their motivations and target populations. Finally, children and adolescents also exhibit stalking behaviors outside of normal developmental behaviors. Behavior patterns that we now call “stalking” have been described for thousands of years. Hippocrates, Galen, Plutarch, and various physicians of the Middle Ages described these behaviors (Lloyd-Goldstein, 1998). In 1837, Esquirol differentiated erotomania and nymphomania (Esquirol, 1838/1965). Both Kraepelin (1921/1976) and de Clérambault (1921) described erotomania in the 1920s. Classic literature provides several historical instances of what appears to be stalking. It has been argued that Shakespeare’s last 25 sonnets reflect his obsessional attachment and spurned pursuit of the “dark lady,” with evidence of obscenities, threats, paranoia, and irrationality (Skoler, 1998). Mullen, Pathé, and Purcell (2000) describe evidence of behaviors typical of stalkers in the lives and written works of Italian poets Danté Alighieri (1265–1321) and Petrarch (1304–1374), and the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). Louisa May Alcott’s first novel, A Long Fatal Love Chase, written in 1866 but discovered and published in 1993, tells the story of a young woman pursued with increasing anger, resentment, and ultimately violence by the husband she left (Mullen et al., 2000). Two of the late twentieth century’s most notorious forensic psychiatric cases arose from the mental problems and violent behavior of stalkers.