Mass hysteria or a class act? Premonitions of fascism between Marxism and liberalism

2014 ◽  
pp. 56-75
Keyword(s):  
Mass Hysteria

Mass Hysteria: Medicine, Culture, and Mothers' Bodiesby Rebecca Kukla

Hypatia ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 216-218
Author(s):  
Mary Briody Mahowald
Keyword(s):  
Mass Hysteria

MASS HYSTERIA IN THE NEW GUINEA HIGHLANDS

Oceania ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Frankel
Keyword(s):  
New Guinea ◽  
Mass Hysteria

Tanz als Krankheit, Tanz als Therapie. Die Formierung eines religiös-medizinischen Konzepts (15. und 16. Jahrhundert)

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-307
Author(s):  
Gregor Rohmann
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
Medical Concept ◽  
Catholic Culture ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Saint John ◽  
Mass Hysteria ◽  
Saint John The Baptist

Abstract‘Dancing mania’ has often been understood as an expression of purportedly ‘typical medieval’ mass hysteria. Yet evidence suggests that a better interpretation would be to see it as a disease, the idea of which was shaped by patterns tracing back to antique cosmology. During the later Middle Ages, this concept became reality as a form of suffering primarily determined by spiritual forces (e.g. the might of Saint John the Baptist) which typically struck only individuals or small groups in narrowly defined regions. This article closely examines a key shift in the semiotic setting of how this disease was interpreted: During the 15th and early 16th centuries, it became medicalised and desacralized. Evidence of this development can be found in isolated instances of ‘dancing mania’ in towns of the Rhine and Moselle area which at first glance would appear to be of little significance. As a medical concept, ‘dancing mania’ would survive the Reformation, and as a concept of primarily medical understanding it would later be re-integrated into the renewed Catholic culture of the late 16th and 17th centuries.

Mass Hysteria: One Syndrome or Two?

1996 ◽  
Vol 168 (5) ◽  
pp. 633-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abubakar Ali-Gombe ◽  
Elspeth Guthrie ◽  
Niall McDermott
Keyword(s):  
Signs And Symptoms ◽  
Neurological Symptoms ◽  
The Other ◽  
Motor Behaviour ◽  
Symptom Presentation ◽  
Visual Contact ◽  
School Girls ◽  
Mass Hysteria ◽  
Nigerian School

BackgroundIt has been suggested that mass hysteria can be divided into two syndromes; one with predominant features of anxiety and the other with predominant abnormalities of motor behaviour. In the former condition, prior tension is absent and spread is by visual contact In the latter, prior tension is present, initial cases can be identified and spread is gradual.MethodThe development and resolution of neurological symptoms in 156 Nigerian school girls were studied and a diagnosis of ‘mass hysteria’ made.ResultsThe signs and symptoms manifested by the school girls during the outbreak of illness had features of both ‘anxiety’ and ‘motor’ predominant forms of mass hysteria.ConclusionsAlthough there may be two patterns of symptom presentation in mass hysteria, other supposedly discrete features overlap. This weakens the argument that there are two separate syndromes.

American Naval Preparations for War with Spain, 1896–1898

1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. S. Grenville
Keyword(s):  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
National Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
American People ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
General Acceptance ◽  
Rigorous Research ◽  
Mass Hysteria

The historical debate over the Spanish-American War of 1898 is being reopened on both sides of the Atlantic. Until comparatively recently historians gave confident answers to the questions of the causes and consequences of the war. Moral assumptions about America's true mission were never very far from the surface of the interpretations which had won general acceptance in the United States. America's involvement in world affairs and more especially the acquisition of an empire was viewed as a perversion of her mission. There existed a consensus of opinion among historians that President McKinley and his administration were not in control of policy; that they were swept forward by a tide of public feeling, by political considerations, and by Congressional pressures they found impossible to resist. It was believed that war had been foisted on the American people by those who manipulated public opinion, by mass hysteria cleverly fomented by sectional interests, by the newspapers, by business pressure groups, and by jingo senators. Responsibility for the acquisition of the Philippines was uncritically ascribed to a junior member of the administration, Theodore Roosevelt, who when Assistant Secretary of the Navy, it was alleged, had plotted the whole thing with his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Rigorous research is challenging every one of these assumptions. The strategic aspects of American foreign policy, and more particularly the influence of naval officers on national policy, have been seriously studied by only a few historians, whose work has as yet little affected the ‘classical’ textbook versions of American policy before the war with Spain.

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