Mass hysteria in history

[DancelikeEmmaGoldman]

I came across this informative YouTube channel and this video struck me as interesting and enlightening. The nuns who went meow is funny, but it’s persistence and spread seem to have distinct parallels with the spread of young girls transing themselves. Add in the power of social media and you can see how even the oddest ideas take hold.

Add in a social climate which is strictly enforcing gender stereotypes and the-end-of-the-world zeitgeist which, (I think), is driving so much anomalous behaviour generally, and you have a perfect storm of uncertainty.

”For an episode of mass hysteria to begin, all that is necessary is troubled times in the culture, a shared set of beliefs and a final, fearful, anxiety-provoking trigger to set the phenomenon into motion”

”The disorder is thought to be driven by a subconscious attempt to "convert" a strong, unbearable emotional or sexual thought into something more socially acceptable. Moreover, whereas individuals can exhibit conversion disorder, it is not at all uncommon for more than one individual to share in this trick of the mind. The sufferers can reinforce the behavior in each other, particularly if they share a common set of beliefs and are burdened by similar anxieties and fears.”

www.huffpost.com/entry/mass-hysteria_b_1239012

I know there was a recent peer-reviewed paper which came to the same conclusion (but more scientifically). This is Transgender Trends annotated review of the evidence.

www.transgendertrend.com/current-evidence/

I suppose what struck me was that we’d certainly call meowing nuns ludicrous and not persuade ourselves they were cats or attempt to graft tails onto their bums. But when young girls, en masse, decide they are boys, what fracture in our culture led us to go, “Sure. We believe you. Take some (dangerous) drugs and book in for surgical mutilation.”?

What a fascinating article, thank you for posting it.

These paragraphs struck me as applicable to the phenomenon of young girls believing they are boys.

“I knew that mental-health diagnoses were a difficult subject among chronic-Lyme patients; non-Lyme doctors who suggested a psychiatric basis for symptoms were a source of profound frustration. Such suggestions were understood to translate directly as All in your head, so get over it.”

“We set a standard that says something like, for your suffering to be legitimate and for us to pay attention to you and want to see you — this is ‘we, medicine’ — you should have a mechanism behind it. So are we surprised that there’s a whole lay group organized around saying we need a mechanism and we demand you see that there’s a somatic mechanism behind this thing?” He went on: “There’s suffering that has no name and no precise mechanism, possibly because it’s not localizable to a mechanism. And that doesn’t make it illegitimate, either.”

“If Lyme can be an identity, it is also a market,”

“Her husband was dubious, and when Hartman echoed his skepticism on Facebook, the backlash was swift and intense. People she’d thought of as friends accused her of medical child abuse; they threatened to call CPS.”

Apologies if stating the obvious

I'm struggling because I live in a very woke world, in real life.

Yesterday I was wondering if the wokeness is a form of mass hysteria? I just can't think what's happened to get us here.

Also, Twitter. This might sound mad, but over the years I've really enjoyed it for creative writing, arts etc

Now it seems to have become people constantly talking about identity and/or illness instead of their creative work. I realised that if I unfollowed, I'd have no one, so have just deleted it.

I hear a lot about "evolving understanding" and "ongoing conversations" around meanings in art and writing, but I'm just looking at it thinking "must we analyse the fuck out of everything?" Is micro analysis of everything another mass hysteria?

Is micro analysis of everything another mass hysteria?

I don’t know if I’d call it hysteria, but I think it’s related to the narrowing of our concerns to the identity of individuals or the precise level of an artist’s acceptability.

I believe that fear of climate change is driving our increasing solipsism. The big picture is too terrifying, so we’re curling into ourselves, like a frightened hedgehog, until all we can see are our navels.

I think micro analysis happens when people have the luxury to navel gaze because nothing more serious is happening to them. Food in their stomach, a pleasant roof over their head, a steady income, not living in a war zone, leisure time, a civilisation that allows some to do thought-based work rather than manual.

I'm in two minds about chronic Lyme. There is a long and undistinguished history of the medical profession dismissing people only because the medical profession doesn't yet have the answers. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence and there is a huge amount not yet known about viruses and bacteria. The medical professional dismissed microscopy and the germ theory of disease for over a century, for starters.

You wouldn’t know how many pupils in a school were self harming because the norm for self harm is that the person is highly secretive and doesn’t tell anyone at all that they are self harming.

And neither self harm nor eating disorders have declined. Both have increased over the past trend.

Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental health issue.

Trans, while being a huge concern, is not as serious a problem as anorexia.

Data on medical diagnosis and treatment depend on standardised classification.
Gender dysphoria no longer designated a psychiatric condition. (WHO)
Aspergers syndrome now under the wider autistic umbrella.
Cholesterol levels "no longer a nutrient of concern".
Optimal Blood pressure levels changed to bring more people into the *high blood pressure" zone for treatment.

Not all bad but small changes in classifications changes data.

And then there is big pharma...

I don't think I've articulated myself well at all

Oh well.

"Optimal Blood pressure levels changed to bring more people into the *high blood pressure" zone for treatment."

Yes, mine used to be low, apparently it's very good now! I'm not sure if this comes under mass hysteria but I was the victim of a huge amount of invasive and unnecessary medical testing last year. I didn't know if it was an isolated case but then this year mum had a UTI and they tried to do similar to her. Based on my experience, she had the courage to say no. I'm wondering if a lot of people are going through it because they think they should.