The Scientific Pursuit of Stalking

August, 2006, 374 pages.

Dr. Reid Meloy’s ninth book provides his vast research on stalking and obsessional following and summarizes the implications of that research. Framed with a beautifully haunting cover painting by Konstantin Dikovsky titled, “The Hidden,” Dr. Meloy has produced the most comprehensive chronology of what we know about stalking yet published. It is a must for every forensic library and any professional working in this area.

From the Foreword
“Stalking is neither new nor rare. Examples of intrusive behaviors that would now be identified as stalking have been described for centuries, but in the late 1980s these behaviors finally found a name. Initially, the American media applied the evocative term “stalkers” to those who pursued the famous. This label gripped the public’s imagination and rapidly propelled stalking into the public’s consciousness. It exposed a once obscure form of social deviance and provided the impetus for its criminalization.”

Though not a new behavior, stalking may well be more prevalent in a new millennium characterized by…”

Table of Contents

Foreword
1. Unrequited Love and the Wish to Kill
2. Nondelusional or Borderline Erotomania: A Disagreement
3. A Case Study: Revisiting the Rorschach of Sirhan Sirhan
4. Demographic and Clinical Comparison of Obsessional Followers and Offenders with Mental Disorders
5. A Case Study: Erotomania in a Shi’ite Islamic Male
6. Stalking (Obsessional Following): A Review of Some Preliminary Studies
7. A Case Study: “All I wanted was to love you…”
8. The Clinical Risk Management of Stalking: “Someone is watching over me…”
9. A Comparative Study of Psychotic and Nonpsychotic Stalking
10. Domestic Protection Orders and the Prediction of Subsequent Criminality and Violence Toward Protectees
11. Stalking: An Old Behavior, A New Crime
12. A Case Study: Erotomania, Triangulation, and Homicide
13. A Replication Study of Obsessional Followers and Offenders with Mental Disorders
14. Risk Factors for Violence Among Stalkers
15. Stalking and Violence
16. Communicated Threats and Violence Toward Public and Private Targets: Discerning Differences Among Those Who Stalk and Attack
17. Pathologies of Attachment, Violence, and Criminality
18. Stalking, Threatening, and Harassing Behavior by Patients – The Risk Management Response
19. When Stalkers Become Violent: The Threat to Public Figures and Private Lives
20. Female Stalkers and Their Victims
21. A Research Review of Public Figure Threats, Approaches, Attacks, and Assassinations in the United States
22. Some Thoughts on the Neurobiology of Stalking
Acknowledgements