chapter 1 - Bentham Science

232 The Primitive Mind and Modern Man John Alan Cohan
THE CONTAGIOUS ASPECT OF MASS HYSTERIA
How “hysteria” becomes “mass hysteria,” is deeply mysterious, but it clearly spreads from one person to a group, or
else an entire group will more or less simultaneously fall into hysterics.
Numerous reports of mental epidemics have confirmed the phenomenon of hysteria “spreading” simply by being
exposed to hysteria going on in others. McEvedy and Beard (1970) claim: “[T]he hysterical reaction is part of
everyone’s potential and can be elicited in any individual by the right set of circumstances” (p. 10). Just what those
“right set of circumstances” are is not at all clear. Some think that in order for mass hysteria to get going the
individuals must have some latent susceptibility, something more than ordinary personal problems or conflict-such
as a kind of hyper-suggestibility.
A well known case involved an epidemic of young women, including nursing students, in Telefomin, New Guinea.
According to Frankel (1976), sixteen girls exhibited episodes mainly within two weeks of the initial incidentconsisting
of a feeling of faintness, confusion, headache, drowsiness, a feeling of coldness, a sense of becoming
deaf-followed by unsteadiness or falling, and then a stage involving violence and running amok, using any handy
object as weapons, sticks or stones, or just fists and feet, and directed towards close relatives, contemporaries and
children. Most of the young women returned to normality within a few hours of being restrained, although some
were disturbed for days or up to two weeks. After recovery they suffered no apparent ill effects.
Nobody really can explain what happened. It is theorized that the women had internalized grievances because there
was strong pressure to conform with traditional values, they were forced to adhere to rigid female-only taboos, and
their sex lives were strictly controlled. Most of the young women attended a nursing school and lived together. On
top of that, there was a polio epidemic in the community, and the students were somewhat anxious because they felt
susceptible to the epidemic simply by living in this closed community. Moreover, they believed that they would be
attacked not by a virus but by a spirit. A dissociated state was easily induced in this hypersuggestible condition.
Also, the girls, while privileged, still were subject to and sensitive to constraints of being young women in their
culture-e.g., the expectation that they were to acquiesce in major issues such as marriage.
In another school mass hysteria incident in Papua New Guinea, studied by Frankel (1976), girls were said to
experience intense anxiety and fear when rumor spread that any girls suspected of promiscuity would be sent to a
state correctional school. Frankel theorizes that the students developed the symptoms as a way of handling their
conflict between authority and their impulses. An outbreak in Taipei involved a background of anxiety and
hypersuggestibility with the spread of a rumor that a “phantom slasher” was at large in the community.
Frankel reports that there are many other examples all over the world:
[I]n an epidemic in a school in Uganda a schizophrenic boy acted as a trigger, and the pupils affected
developed symptoms identical to those exhibited by the schizophrenic, such as grimacing, using vulgar
language and neglecting personal care. In an epidemic in a Louisiana School one girl developed
conversion symptoms, particularly twitching, and this set the pattern for those subsequently affected, who
also twitched. Ideas can be as contagious as actions. In Mattoon, Illinois, a woman telephoned the police
complaining that a prowler had gassed her by throwing anaesthetic through her bedroom window. The
episode was given dramatic publicity in the local press, and twenty-eight more people were convinced
that they too had been gassed. In another epidemic in the ward of a mental hospital, a dream about
childbirth of one woman prompted three other women to experience hysterical parturition. In an epidemic
in a Malaysian school a girl saw a ghost, screamed and fainted. Many others also thought they saw ghosts,
and they reacted in the same way (pp. 117-118).
Sharp (1990) found well-documented cases of spirit possession by groups of people, particularly in schools and
factories in Madagascar, where there is a long tradition of spirit possession. Madagascar is very much a spirit
culture, where good and evil spirits are employed in many contexts.
According to Sharp, the people are very much into magical remedies, and obtain magical substances from specialists
for health, romance, conditions at work, or to help children’s performance in school. The use of magic is sometimes