Mass hysteria
Imtiyaz Husain, Gulshan 1, Dhaka
I have read with interest your report on the above subject. In fact, you are talking about collective obsessions, which is a socio-psychological phenomenon having manifestations similar to hysterical symptoms by more than one person. It may begin when a group witnesses an individual becoming hysterical during a traumatic or extremely stressful or frustrating event. A potential symptom is group nausea, in which a person becomes violently ill. This situation triggers a similar or sympathetic reaction in other members of the group. A recent occurrence was in Bransley, UK as reported in the Times of 6th December 2006. Thirty pupils began feeling ill after watching a widely used biology video. Others who had heard of the occurrence also showed similar symptoms. The similarity I see as a student of human behaviour is that while it is difficult sometimes to find the cause-effect relationship but in all the cases (girl students in various rural places and in Bransley) they were in teens and may have been undergoing the hazard of physical puberty changes which is a very stressful period of life. The restrictive society especially in our rural areas was probably suppressing their normal sexual development process and may have triggered the hysteria as an alternative behaviour in the form of a defence mechanism in order to cope with the physical changes in their bodies. Defence mechanism, under the Freudian concept is the ways the human mind takes compensatory action to overcome the stressful or difficult situations. There are many forms of defence mechanism such as denial, displacement, rationalisation, sublimation etc. Throughout centuries mass hysteria has caused havoc in many forms, big and small. The witchcraft trials and witch hunts of Salem to Anthrax scare, McCarthyism in the US, the intolerable Spanish Inquisitions of the middle ages and many big and small manifestations and accidents in which people acted irrationally. It can also manifest in situations where there is a problem that is endangering society, but the people want to find a scapegoat and take out their frustrations out on him often fatally to the scapegoat, instead of looking for the cause of the problem and potentially finding themselves to be guilty. This is not the first time that we have faced this phenomenon. There are many instances-- big and small, national and regional. Perhaps the biggest instance of mass hysteria was that of the share market crash of 1996, totally misunderstood by the government and the media. In November 1996 when the stock market bubble eventually burst, there was mass hysteria because many people could not rationalise the fall in the already abnormal price rise. The eventual result was to blame this fall in the prices of shares on market operators. What is necessary in all the cases for the government is to set up trauma control centres for the victims.
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