ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author provides an overview of psychoanalytically relevant developmental contexts for stalking, and the bulk of her ideas on sexual and surveillance stalking as illustrated clinically, in film, and in real and virtual world at large. Scant references to the words “stalking” or “stalker” from the standard source, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing fall into three main categories: neuroscientifically based stalking—usually genetic patterns in animals, stalking based on mother–infant attachment patterns, and stalking in aggressive and sadomasochistically charged object relationships. Several writers refer to stalking and extreme sadomasochism, a frequent component of erotomanic and voyeuristic sexual stalking. In the psychoanalytic literature on neuroscience and neuropsycho-analysis, authors identify stalking in animals and, to some extent, humans, as brain mediated normal behaviour. H. Zellner, in his review of J. Panksepp’s work on anger and aggression, notes some neuroscientific bases for stalking in animals that could promote psychoanalytic consideration of stalking in humans.
