Mass Hysterias

Introduction to See You On The Other Side podcast, episode 133, 28 February 2017 (interview by Mike Huberty and Allison Jornlin, Madison, Wisconsin).
Online at http://othersidepodcast.com/blog/2017/02/28/133-popobawa-dr-martin-walsh-idea-virus/.

Golovacheva, Irina. “Witches and the Devil in Salem and Loudun: Aldous Huxley, Marion Starkey and Arthur Miller on Demonic Possession,”  Aldous Huxley Annual. 5. (2005): 193- 213.

Summary

The paper focuses on Aldous Huxley’s special interest in the phenomenon of witch-craze. His historical and biographical treatise The Devils of Loudun (1952) investigates a case of demonomania in the 17th century France. Besides, it contains the analysis of such phenomena as possession and obsession both viewed historically, medically and psychoanalytically. The author of the article compares Huxley’s book with two related texts written in the 1940-60-s in the USA: The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (1949) by Marion L. Starkey and The Crucible (1953) by Arthur Miller, both of which concretize similar general ideas by particular case history – the episode of demonic possession and witch-hunting in the 17th century Salem. Huxley saw the striking similarity of the Loudun and the Salem stories exemplifying the phenomena of mass psychology. The Devils of Loudun, besides being the study of superstitions, treats the epidemic of witch-prosecution as resulting from the systematizing influence of scholastic philosophy and psychology.

Key words: Aldous Huxley, Marion L. Starkey, Arthur Miller, witchcraft, Early Modern Age, witch-hunt, Loudun, Salem, demonic possession, hysteria, split-self

A histeria coletiva é um fenômeno social amplamente visualizável e difundido através da história das sociedades humanas, sendo ainda pouco estudado e conhecido até então, muito embora possa proporcionar consequências mais ou menos gravosas ao meio social em que se realiza. Assim, o presente trabalho visa delimitar o conceito de histeria coletiva com base numa análise dos variados episódios históricos em que se deu – notadamente a caça às bruxas e a Inquisição, bem como a histeria na contemporaneidade sob a comunicação massiva – de acordo com o anteparo de múltiplos e diversos fatores determinantes (sociais, culturais, econômicos, religiosos, etc.) e da leitura da bibliografia específica, seja nacional ou estrangeira. Ao fim, foi plenamente possível delimitar, compreender e classificar o conceito de histeria coletiva, bem como descrevê-lo de forma geral e apontar em que circunstancias ocorre o fenômeno e quais são suas possíveis consequências.

The goal of this paper is to analyze a little-known set of documents referring to a "Dancing Epidemic" that took place in Itapagipe, a suburb of Salvador, capital of the province of Bahia, Brazil, in 1882. Through the studies of a group of physicians, especially Raimundo Nina Rodrigues (1862-1906), a psychiatrist and anthropologist from the Bahia School of Medicine, the medical knowledge built on this unique phenomenon in Brazilian history is examined. The case in particular involved a crowd that spread through the streets of Itapagipe, attracting the interest of the medical classes, who were intrigued by the symptoms of motor incoordination the patients manifested. Inspired by foreign literature, but developing their own theories, Rodrigues and colleagues created a unique body of knowledge about the infirmity.

Like lynching and other mass hysterias, xenophobia exemplifies a contagious, collective wave of energy and hedonic quality that can point toward a troubling unpredictability at the core of political and social systems. While earlier studies of mass hysteria and popular discourse assume that cooler heads (aka rational individuals with their logic) could and should regain control over those emotions that are deemed irrational, and that boundaries are assumed healthy only when intact, affect studies pose individuals as nodes of biosocial networks larger than themselves. Thus rather than suggesting that the individual can only prevent societal harm by gaining command and patrolling the borders of an autonomous self, we embrace the notion that affects can exert a positive and transformative force on a social reality that is resistant to top-down policy intervention and any straightforward moral or logical plea.

In Carmen de Bolivar, a town on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, different narratives developed around a mysterious symptomatology that appeared after the inoculation of the Human Papillomavirus vaccine in 2014. While the girls affected by the symptomatology and their families argued that the symptoms are adverse events following immunization (AEFI), the National Health Institute (INS) affirmed that the symptoms were related to a psychogenic dynamic, which they also called collective hysteria. The same position was also shared by the Government and by part of the scientific community.

In my research, I focused on the epidemiological practice used by the INS, questioning how the girls’ narratives were reduced and synthesized in the epidemiological study and to what purposes. From the perspectives of the Illness Narratives and Critical Epidemiology, I conducted fieldwork in Colombia amongst both communities. Over a period of three months, I conducted interviews with some of the girls affected by the symptomatology, as well as some of the epidemiologists and professionals involved in the collective hysteria narrative.

In my thesis, I argue that the epidemiological methods and practice are entailed with two dynamics that influenced the research conclusions. (1) A double reductionism performed by the epidemiological report, which silenced the girls excluding many meanings and characteristics of the symptomatology. (2) The influence of the center-periphery relation between the researchers and the researched in the way epidemiological data are generated. Overall, I argue that ontological and epistemological premises, system limitations and forces, political and economical interests, societal imaginaries, as well as personal values and assumptions played a role in the mass hysteria explanation.

https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2020/10/salem-witches-victims/

The paper turns away from the idea of the Salem Witch Trials and similar current-day experiences being a paranormal event. The paper, rather, proposes the psychologically-based explanation that Mass Conversion Disorder (MCD) also known as Mass Psychogenic Illness or Mass Hysteria, was the cause of the Salem ‘witch’ victims’ symptoms. The eating disorder Pica is also used in conjunction with MCD to explain symptoms afflicting the victims.

Abstract

In this white paper, I compile evidence of the origins of COVID-19 through its evolutionary experimentation and growth-function research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in partnership with Harvard University, NIH, NIAID, WHO, University of Alabama, and University of North Texas, domestically.

I explore possible scenarios with research-driven questions that require full cooperation from labs worldwide, including those mentioned above in order to better understand COVID-19 and the reasons for such a broad spectrum of symptoms.

Finally, I analyze any potentiality of "cytokine storms,” toxicity, and hysteria resulting in somatoform. It is only through collaborative efforts from the science and intelligence communities that we can understand the magnitude of COVID-19 and its implications.

This article unpacks the events and reactions surrounding a mysterious ‘fainting wave’ that swept through Angolan middle and high schools from early 2011 on. By attending to the historicity and materiality of the fainting wave, the article investigates why the strong conviction took root of a dark political intentionality behind this inexplicable phenomenon, and why this conspiratorial interpretation prevailed over alternative explanations of a more psychological or spiritual bent. Through this, the article contributes to disaggregating the seemingly monolithic, neo-authoritarian Angolan state. More importantly, it points to the limitations of analyses pivoting on an idea of opposing rationalities, while at the same time demonstrating how historically attuned, deep ethnography can help us overcome the limits of more ‘scientistic’ psychological explanations. Open Access at the JRAI