monomania

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   an excessive or obsessive concentration on a single subject or idea

   His interest in the vanished expedition gradually hardened into monomania.

2. 2
   noun

   in historical psychiatry, a form of mental disorder thought to affect only one area of an otherwise sound mind

   Nineteenth-century physicians sometimes diagnosed a narrowly focused delusion as monomania.

Formed from mono- ("one, single") + mania, or borrowed from French monomanie. The term became prominent in nineteenth-century psychiatry for an alleged disorder confined to one idea or impulse, and later broadened to mean any consuming preoccupation.

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