Bartholomew - Ethnocentricity and ther Social Construction of Mass Hysteria

ROBERT E.
BARTHOLOMEW
ETHNOCENTRICITY AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF

'MASS HYSTERIA'
ABSTRACT. This study provides a critical historical review and analysis of the variety
of human expressions which have been erroneously labeled under the grandiose category
"mass hysteria." It is argued that Western science reductionist approaches to the
classification of "mass hysteria" treat it as an entity to be discovered transculturally, and
in their self-fulfilling search for universals systematically exclude what does not fit
within the autonomous parameters of its Western-biased culture model, exemplifying
what Kleinman (1977) terms a "category fallacy." As a result of objectivist
methodologies, the etiology of actions labeled as "mass hysteria" is typically viewed as
deviant, irrational or abnormal behavior resulting from a malfunctioning 'proper' social
order. However, what constitutes 'the' correct social order is a function of a researcher's
historical sociocultural and/or scientific milieu. This study reviews the problem,
advocating Geertz's (1973) culturally relativistic approach to understanding various
cross-cultural behavior that is sensitive to and tolerant of the unique context and milieu of
participants. "Mass" or "epidemic hysteria" is viewed as an invention of Western
psychiatry and should be abandoned and replaced with the term collective exaggerated
emotions. Instead of attempting to 'discover' a neatly packaged, unitary external disease
entity, the focus of a meaning-oriented approach emphasizes the deciphering of foreign
realities, semantic networks and symbol systems.
...interpretive anthropology directly addresses the world in which

we humans are. Conventional social science, in its search for
underlying causes, explains away that world and in doing so
alienates us from it and destroys its magic. When we are
possessed, we do not exist within the category of psychological
defense mechanisms. Instead, we are in the company of gods who
are all the more real for being human creations.
To reduce this world of contextual webs, of ghostly presences,
to cause-and-effect languages of conventional social science is to
risk seriously misunderstanding our mode of being (Richardson
1984:275).
INTRODUCTION
A wide variety o f collective behavior has been classified as "mass hysteria."

This term, however, is confusing and controversial. Continuing usage o f such
metaphors as "epidemic," "infected," "outbreak" and "contagion" are remnants
of the 19th century disease model of "psychic epidemics," and are misleading
and inaccurate. Further, most participants are clearly not hysterical by the
clinical definition o f the word. Additionally, what constitutes "mass hysteria"
typically differs cross-culturally and between researchers in history, medicine,
psychology, anthropology and sociology. Even within disciplines, there are
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 14: 455-494, 1990.

© 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
456 ROBERT E. BARTHOLOMEW
disagreements as to what behavior the term encompasses. Many authors ignore

or sidestep the debate by leaving their definition ambiguous (i.e., Levine 1977;
Massey et al. 1981) or failing to define the term altogether (i.e., Bell and Jones
1958; Ebrahim 1968). While several authors note the need to separate certain
categories of "mass hysteria" into different sub-types (Zilboorg 1941; Gruen-
berg 1957; Rosen 1968; Wessely 1987), none attempt the task. This is unsurpris-
ing due to the lack of a satisfactory universal definition, and the large volume of
varying literature in the field.
Most contributions to the scientific literature on "mass hysteria" are by
professional scholars with little or no formal training on the subject. Most
psychiatric and sociology books, for instance, ignore the topic or provide a scant
synopsis. The majority of those who conduct research on this subject do so after
inadvertently becoming involved in some type of collective imitative behavior
they judge to be bizarre, irrational or psychopathological by contemporary
Western standards. Published reports provide a brief literature review (which is
dominated by universalist conceptions of normality and rationality). Based on
these empiricist traditions, personality correlates in predisposed individuals are
often analyzed (below avarage IQ, low socio-economic status) and a specific
source of stress is identified (exams, death of a friend, a strange odor, nuclear
fallout fears). Unfortunately, such stressors and predisposing personality
correlates are only identified retrospectively, and the researcher often fails to
consider seriously a sociocultural perspective that is sensitive to the taken-for-
granted realities of a particular people at a particular time and place.
Any analysis of behavior classified as "mass hysteria" must consider its social
aspects, as it involves collective imitation that is filtered through culturally
ascribed symbol systems which are most fruitfully deciphered utilizing qualita-
tive social science methodologies. Physical science frameworks and
methodological assumptions utilized to understand this topic have contributed
significantly to the present confusion surrounding the term, often resulting in
behavior that seems foreign to a particular researcher being labeled as deviant or
abnormal. Hence, Sullivan in Littlewood (1986:37) remarks that "Any problem
in psychopathology becomes a problem of symbol functioning, a matter of
seeking to understand and interpret eccentric symbol performance." Thus, from
the position of cultural relativists who view few if any standards worthy of
universal respect, to ask what is the proper way to classify the world or design a
society "is like asking what is the proper food of man or what is the best
language to speak!" (Shweder 1984:49). Geertz (1973:5) views the symbol
system context of paramount importance in evaluating behavior different from
our own.
...man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture
to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in
search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after,
MASS HYSTERIA 457
construing social expressions on their surface enigmatical.
Geertz's concept of knowledge as a cultural construction parallels Berger and

Luckman's (1967) notion of "reality" as socially constructed, emphasizing its
relativity; from this perspective, "value and importance is a matter of consensus;
social 'facts' are created not discovered" (Shweder and Bourne 1986:165). This
position emphasizes the unique events and circumstances which led to a
particular interpretation of "reality" for the participants of any given 'hysterical'
episode. By emphasizing meaning, context and arbitrariness, analysis should
focus on human plasticity and its role in acquiring conduct codes which "lie
outside the boundaries of the individual as such, in that intersubjective world of
common understandings" (Geertz 1966).
Contemporary interpretive social theory stands in direct opposition to a rich
tradition of 20th century writing analyzing the effects of rapid social change and
crisis in situations where "mass hysteria" is said to result from the collective
conscience being either in disarray or dissipated. While there are divergent
interpretations within the objectivist or realist approach, Turner and Killian
(1987:18) note the underlying assumption of this view in explaining the origin
and persistence of social order:
...all imply...given sufficient time, resources, and skill, social scientists will be able to
identify and describe social reality and its laws. This description need not correspond to
the image that the members themselves have of their society and its culture. Indeed, it
probably will not because - the expert - the social scientist - is held to be necessary
for...construction of a valid, objective account.
Social scientists with this...approach...seek laws of social change but assume that the
roots of change are...in...the social order...not in the behavior of the members of the
society. Such concepts as "cultural lag," "anomie," "dysfunction," and "structural strain"
imply that social change, including collective behavior, comes about because something
is not working correctly or normally in the culture, the social structure or the social
system. For the advocates of this approach, the social scientist's goal is to describe this
structure of social system accurately in order to...recognize malfunctions or disorders,
explain what produces them, predict their consequences, and, if asked, prescribe remedies
or policies to correct them.
The danger of this approach is that actions deviating from a researcher's version
of absolute reality, and falling outside the self-constructed boundaries of what
constitutes acceptable behavior, have often been labelled as psychopathological.
This objectivist tendency to label behavior that is different as 'wrong,' 'bad,'
'primitive,' or 'regressive' is exemplified in the study of "mass hysteria" and the
vacillating interpretations that have been ascribed to a variety of behaviors
depending on the particular definition of 'objective reality' in vogue.
Social science theorists, particularly those studying millennial movements and
outbreaks of "mass hysteria," have traditionally viewed the etiology of such
episodes as 'deviant,' 'abnormal,' or 'irrational' reactions typically attributable
to aspects of the social structure which are in "disorganization" (Blumer
1936-1937), "disequilibrium" (Wilson and Wilson 1954), "discontinuity" and
"disruption" (Lindesmith and Strauss 1968) or "out of joint" (Smelser 1962).

Utilization of this ethnocentric Western science universalist approach to classify
a variety of collective imitative behavior that has been lumped under the
misleading heading of "mass hysteria" fails to address the translation of
'different' emotional word-views (Shweder and Bourne 1982), semantic
differences in describing illnesses transculturally (Good 1977), and the assump-
tion that disease "is a thing to be 'discovered' in pure form under the layers of
cultural camouflage" (Kleinman 1977:4). Objectivist studies of "mass hysteria,"
in their self-fulfilling search for universals, systematically exclude what does not
fit within the autonomous parameters of its Western cultural model, and
exemplify what Kleinman (1977:4) terms a "category fallacy."
Having dispensed with indigenous illness categories because they are culture-specific,
studies of this kind go on to superimpose their own cultural categories on some sample of
deviant behavior in other cultures, as if their own illness categories were culture-free.
This assumption simply cannot be made in comparative cross-cultural research as
Fabrega has repeatedly shown. Psychiatric categories are bound to the context of
professional psychiatric theory and practice in the West. Psychiatry must learn from
anthropology that culture does considerably more than shape illness as an experience; it
shapes the very way we conceive of illness.
This is no more evident than in the influential work of Francois Sirois (1974,
1982) who has conducted the most comprehensive reviews of the "mass
hysteria" literature. Sirois (1974:7) considers the phenomena essentially one of
"socially shared psychopathology," lumps certain episodes of amok and latah
together as "epidemic hysteria," and states:
In reviewing epidemic hysteria it was assumed that most of the reports were describing
similar phenomena under various labels. The historical and geographic differences in the
medical and cultural contexts were thought to account for much of the variance in the
description and nomenclature (Sirois 1974:27).
While identifying five types of "epidemic hysteria," from the "explosive" form
which generally occurs in small institutionalized social networks, to the "large
diffuse outbreak" involving communities overwhelmed with false rumors and
beliefs, Sirois a s s u m e s that each of these profiles "presented various aspects of
an underlying process" which vary according to "the moment of the epidemic
they emphasize and the speed with which the process is unfolded" (Sirois 1982:
230).
The problematic tendency of objectivist practitioners to categorize a variety of
culture-specific behavior relative to the values and norms of their own culture
and/or personal beliefs or the standards of their scientific cultural milieu, is
evidenced in Table I. Depending on the methodological approach and/or cultural
bias of the researcher, such seemingly diverse social phenomena as witchcraft,
'cargo cults,' mass clay eating and the diagnosis of masturbation have been
lumped within the broad category of "mass hysteria" and labeled by social
scientists as 'abnormal' or 'irrational.'
MASS HYSTERIA 459
TABLE I
Collective contagious behavior labeled as "mass hysteria"

Type of behavior Source
Salem 'witch' hunts (Starkey 1949; Bonfanti 1977)

Middle ages dancing mania (Hecker 1843)
Medieval flagellants (Cohn 1957)
Melasian 'cargo cults' (Worsley 1957; Merksey 1979)
'War of Worlds' panic (Cantfil 1940)
Jonestown, Guayana (Kruse 1986; Faguet and Faguet 1982)
group suicide
Altered states of consciousness (Teoh et al. 1975)
associated with certain rock
music concerts
Masturbatory 'insanity' (Gilbert 1975)
Ecstatic reactions in certain (Sargant 1957)
charismatic sects
Group depression (Eastwell 1982)
Certain culture-bound (Sirois 1974)
'syndromes'
Sightings of strange creatures (Miller et al. 1978)
Fads, fashions, crazes, booms a (Brown 1954)
Mass deliberate husband (Mackay 1852)
poisonings
Mass psychogenic illness (Colligan 1978)
Group hypnosis during (Azuma and Stevenson 1988)
'psychic surgery'
German Nazi movement (Baynes 1941; Cartwright and Biddiss 1972)
Group lycanthropy (Goshen 1967)
Mass clay eating among (Eastwell 1979)
Australian Aboriginals
Collective paranoia (Tseng 1969)
'Flying saucer' waves (Durant 1953; Menzel 1953)
Cattle 'mutilations' (Stewart 1977)
Riots (Smelser 1962)
Norm and value-orientated (Smelser 1962)
social movements
U.S. communist scares (Murray 1964; Levin 1971; Selvin 1989)
Collective glossolalia2 (Stephen 1977; Barr 1983b)
Phantom attackers (Johnson 1945; Jacobs 1965)
'Moving' statues (Toibin 1985)
A.I.D.S. (Schmidt 1984; Robertson 1987)
'Epidemic' pyromania (Boling and Brotman 1975)
Collective "barking...like dogs" (Freind 1701)
Familial 'psychoses' (Cottrell and Vibber 1930; Hwang 1976)
Phantom pregnancy 'epidemic' (Benaim et al. 1973)
Folie ~ deux 'psychoses' (Merksey 1979)
Imagined spider (Mora 1963; Russell 1979)
and insect bites (Champion et al. 1963; Kerckhoff and Back
1986)
a Penrose (1952) even interpreted "crazes" such as the yo-yo, crossword puzzles and
clothing fashions as a form of mild "psychopathological" crowd "disorder."
Instead of viewing a particular form of "mass hysteria" within the context of

the unique norms and values of the particular culture under scrutiny, objectivists
have traditionally evaluated human behavior through the eyes and standards of
their restricted cultural experiences. The plethora of descriptive terms used to
identify the source of "mass hysteria" typically entail overt psychopathological
labels, and reflect the confusion created by the diverse ethnocentricities of
particular social science methodologies and/or personal or cultural standards
employed (see Table II). The terms "shared group psychopathology" (Gruenberg
1957) and "hysterical psychosis" (Hirsch and Hollender 1969), for instance,
inherently assume the presence of mental disorder or pathology.
TABLE II
The variety of terms used to identify the sources of "mass hysteria"

Label Source
Psychic epidemic (Hecker 1843)

Moral epidemics (Mackay 1952)
Folie communiqu6e (Baillarger 1857)
Epidemic insanity (Despine 1875)
Emotional contagion (LeBon 1879)
Psychic disturbance (Anonymous 1888)
Acute psychic contagion (Rembolt 1893)
Morbid contagion (Monytel 1894)
Psychic suggestion (Lilienfeld 1896)
Unconscious suggestion (Altamira 1898)
Epidemic folie ~ deux (Rodriques 1901)
Social insanity (Friedmann 1901)
Folie par contagion (Carder 1903)
Automatic imitation (Dumas 1911)
Hallucination by suggestion (Anonymous 1913)
Hysterical epidemic (Bleuler 1920)
Psychic mass infection (Martin 1923)
Collective hysteria (Fallaize 1923)
Mass psychosis (Eckert 1940; Schumacher 1940)
Contagious frenzies (Norman 1945)
Mass psychopathology (Simmel 1946)
Hysterical fits and mass hysterical attacks (Page 1947)
Mass delusion (Meerloo 1949)
Anxiety hysterical reaction (Gloyne 1950)
Behavioural contagion (Grosser et al. 1951)
Socially shared collective madness CLefebvre 1954)
Shared group psychopathology (Gruenberg 1957)
Mental epidemic (Taylor and Hunter 1958)
Mass hallucinatory phenomena (Medalia and Larsen 1958)
Mental contagion (Meerloo 1959)
Collective hypnosis (Arieti and Meth 1959)
Shared psychopathology (Lang and Lang 1961)
Epidemic hysteria (Tan 1963)
Hysterical contagion (Kerckhoffet al. 1965)
MASS HYSTERIA 461
TABLE II (continued)
The variety of terms used to identify the sources of "mass hysteria"

Label Source
Hysterical psychosis (Langness 1965)

Behavior contagion (Wheeler 1966)
Collective mental illness (Kumasaka 1966)
Conversion reaction (Nemiah 1967)
Phantom epidemic (Mausner and Gezon 1967)
Mass psychology (Jaspers 1968)
Epidemic collective psychosis and (Rosen 1968)
collective psychopathology
Communicated hysteria (Lyons 1970)
Collective psychosis (Goldenson 1970)
Group hysteria (Olczak 1971)
Mob hysteria (Cartwright and Biddis 1972)
Social contagion (Turner and Killian 1972)
Collective epidemics (Kiev 1972)
Mass suggestibility and group contagion (Page 1973)
Crowd hysteria (Go!dberg 1973)
Collective 'hysteriform' manifestation (Sirois 1974)
Psychic contagion (Stahl and Lebedun 1974)
Group epidemic (Nye 1975)
Group mental disorder and mass madness (Coleman 1976)
Epidemic transient disturbance (Nitzkin 1976)
Associative illness (Eastwell 1976)
Transient collective psychosis (Raschka 1976)
Transient hysterical reactions (Frankel 1976)
Psychogenic anxiety syndrome (Jilek and Jilek-Aall 1977)
Collective delusion (Stewart 1977)
Mass psychogenic illness (Colligan 1978)
Contagious psychogenic illness (Coherr et al. 1978)
Group ecstatic experience (Simon 1978)
Collective stress syndrome (Mann and Rosenblatt 1979)
Communicable hysteria (Merksey 1979)
Epidemic psychological disturbance (Tseng and Hsu 1980)
Epidemic transient situational disturbance (Faust and Brilliant 1981)
Psychological epidemic (Wong et al. 1982)
Psychotic epidemics and (Faguet and Faguet 1982)
collective mental disorders
Psychogenic epidemic (Olkinuora 1984)
Group contagious hysteria (Nandi et al. 1985)
Group conversion reaction (Boxer 1985)
Epidemic psychogenic illness (Alexander and Fedoruk 1986)
Mass systemic psychogenic illness (Araki and Honma 1986)
Mass anxiety hysteria and (Wessely 1987)
mass motor hysteria
Collective stress reaction and (Yassi et al. 1989)
mass anxiety epidemics
THE INTELLECTUAL ROOTS OF THE CONTEMPORARY

'EPIDEMIC HYSTERIA' DILEMMA
During the mid-19th century, Rudolf Virchow developed an influential theory of

both infectious disease and "psychic epidemics," asserting that both 'illnesses'
result from "social and cultural maladjustment" (Rosen 1968:195). Virchow
reasoned that if disease results from unfavorable conditions of individual life,
"epidemics must be indicative of major disturbances of mass life" (Virchow
1849:46). The relationship between social stresses and collective mental
'disorders' became a common theme during this period (Nye 1975; Moscovici
1985). Similar views of "mental epidemics" were held by Neumann (1851:89),
LeBon (1879), Martin (1920), Strecker (1940).
Various scholars of the era discussed mass behavior under the headings of
"collective psychology," "group psychology" and "group madness." French
psychologist Gustave LeBon (1896:113-114) likened "emotional contagion" to
a form of shared madness, believing that ideas, emotions and beliefs infect
crowds in a contagious manner "as intense as that of microbes... Cerebral
disorders, like madness, are contagious... One knows how frequent madness is
among doctors for the insane." There existed a general consensus that "mob"
behavior was deviant, abnormal, irrational or psychopathological, and could
temporarily seize everyday people in the heat of the crowd, urged on by a
competent orator. Such labels of participants in the contemporary field of
"collective behavior," under which "mass hysteria" is classified, continue to
hold true today (Rosen 1968:196; Davison and Neale 1978:10-14; Turner and
Killian 1987:2), particularly among psychologists and psychiatrists. Further,
numerous anthropologists and medical investigators continue to describe such
behavior in terms of group pathology.
In analyzing "demonophobia, " a fear of witches and demons which spread
through Western society during the late 15th century, and continuing for two
centuries, Hecker (1843) drew on the commonly held view that "dancing"
manias were a form of socially shared "psychopathology" (Gruenberg 1957).
These episodes became a prominent feature of European life during the middle
ages, involving both men and women who would partake in frenzied behavior
which included screaming, wild dancing, symbolic sexual gestures, convulsions,
hallucinations, and abdominal pains. 1 Detailed accounts of many of these
episodes appear in Hecker's classic, The Epidemics of the Middle Ages. Hecker
considered the origin of the outbreaks due to "morbid sympathy" from periods
of acutely morbid scourges of diseases, such as their appearance coinciding with
the feeling of collective pessimism and despair following the Black Death.
Fear of the devil during this period manifested in various forms, with
numerous reports of "epidemic possession" involving convulsions and
prophecies "which were quickly imitated and reached epidemic proportions"
MASS HYSTERIA 463
(Delvin 1987:136, 251; Petit 1880). More recently, Bliss (1986:224) has taken a
noncontextual psychological approach which blames much of "the insane idea"
surrounding demonophobia on spontaneous "self hypnosis." Psychiatrist Casper
Schmidt (1984) holds a similar "group trance" interpretation.
Utilizing the prominent contagious psychopathological notion of "psychic
epidemics," Despine (1875:721) noted that "moral contagion" occurred "only
among healthy people" and was responsible for "epidemic insanity." Using
similar assumptions, Sidis (1898) labeled the medieval European Crusades as a
form of group "insanity" which resulted in masses of people yielding to
irresistible urges to offer their lives for Christianity. These popular 19th century
notions of insanity being contagious, and induced by the LeBonian model of
crowd participants succumbing to 'primitive' emotions, provide a better
understanding of Charles Mackay's classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions
and the Madness of Crowds (1852). In it, Mackay provides voluminous analysis
of such events as the Dutch 'Tulip mania' in 14th and 15th century Holland, and
17th century European husband-poisonings as forms of group "madness."
Under the predominant 18th and 19th century conceptions, individual hysteria
was typically classified as a disease. Accordingly, in the case of medieval
witchcraft, 'witches' were considered "maniacs or melancholics" (Pinel 1962
(1801):238), "distracted in mind" (Lecky 1869:54), or suffering from disorders
of "neuropathology," as was believed by Charcot and Freud (Szasz 1970:73). In
fact, this classification was popularized in psychiatry with the work of Zilboorg
(1935, 1941), who myopically considered most medieval 'witches' as "mentally
ill" (Szsaz 1974:184). This view of 'witches' in addition to participants of
collective medieval flagellation, dancing mania, lycanthropy and demonology
continues (Bootzin and Acocella 1980:12-20; Duke and Nowicki 1986:47;
Meyer and Salmon 1988:17).
The relationship between mental disease and inadequate social conditions
continues to hold widespread acceptance, with the notion that "society is
responsible for stresses resulting from rapid social change or cultural lag which
produce mental conflicts and breakdowns" (Rosen 1968:172). This position is a
fundamental part of structural attempts to explain collective behavior, and is no
more clearly seen than in contemporary structural interpretations of various
social movements; it provides a convenient rationalization for explaining norms
and values different from a particular researcher. While there is an overwhelm-
ing consensus concerning the relationship of mental illness and environment, the
typical structural assumption that a particular society identified as experiencing
excessive mental disorders is in a state of disarray, lag, anomie or strain, and as
a result is functioning improperly, is unsubstantiated.
Collective twitching, possession, trance, glossolalia, crying, fantasies and
prophecies associated with various millenarian movements have typically been
labeled as "mass hysteria" and received pathological explanations. In the case of
Melanesian 'cargo cults,' various authors have described these phenomena as a

form of group or collective hysteria (Williams 1923; Bemdt 1952; Worsley
1957; Burton-Bradley 1973; Merskey 1979), in addition to their presence in
Melanesian societies in general (Reay 1965; Frankel 1976). Some authors
interpret 'cargo cults' as an "irrational" fantasy reaction (Linton 1943; Mair
1948; Firth 1951). Wilson (1973:337-338) also views such 'cults' as
"irrational." Eliade (1970) takes a psycho-therapeutic view, "under which
certain Melanesian societies could be regarded as suffering from a neurosis, the
cure of which is attempted by a sort of social psycho-analytical therapy, in this
case the cargo cult" (Christiansen 1969:100). While commenting on functional
aspects, Vittorio (1963:315) describes them in terms of "collective psychoses"
and "escapism." Barr (1983:vi) notes that many social interpretations of
Melanesian 'cargo cults' are based on the belief "that the society involved is
somehow maladjusted .... and forms of 'social pathology' are considered to be
integral aspects." Worsley (1957) provides a well-known example. Stephen
(1977:1) discusses the tendency of early authors to describe the phenomena
psychopathologically:
In the now voluminous literature on Melanesian cargo cults one aspect which receives
scant attention from serious scholars is the mass "hysteria" - the trances, shaking,
speaking in tongues, wild dancing and emotionalism - which usually accompanies such
movements. The omission is not surprising. For early observers, like the government
anthropologist F.E. Williams, the "hysteria" was a symptom of social dislocation, the
"anomie" caused by western civilization, while later writers interpreted the cults as the
protest of desperate, impotent peoples. More recently, scholars have stressed the positive
elements of cargoism, in particular the elaboration of new moral codes and the creation of
new and larger political units.
Hempenstall (1981:2) takes a relativistic position, noting how "in the

Melanesian frame of reference" cargo myths and movements reflect rational
"attempts to solve certain problems in Melanesian terms."
What western man has often seen as bizarre, irrational parodying of western civilisation
has been in fact a creative response to a succession of modernization crises, part of a
continuum of experiments by Melanesians to bring the changes to their lives within their
own frame of reference (Hempenstall t 981:7).
Medieval millenarian participants have been viewed as suffering from group

pathology, a result of rapid social change and the resultant "strains" (Worsley
1957). Norman Cohn in The Pursuit of the Millennium holds an underlying
collective psychopathological interpretation of medieval flagellants, viewing
them as mass "paranoid phantasies" (Cohn 1957:73). This new form of penance,
adopted from 1lth century monastic hermits of Camaldoli and Fonte Avellana,
spread rapidly throughout Europe from the 12th to the 15th centuries. Self-
flagellation gained widespread acceptance during 12th century Europe, not only
becoming a "normal feature" of monastic Latin Christiandom, "but one of the
commonest of all penitential techniques" in general (Cohn 1957:127). Similar
MASS HYSTERIA 465
forms of "self-torturing" in expectation of spiritual reward have occurred in

northern New Mexico among Los Hermanos Penitentes de Sangre de Christo
(Menninger 1938), and have been classified under "collective mental disorders"
(Faguet and Faguet 1982:11).
The prominence of religious and political 'cults' during the English revolution
have also been viewed as a form of societal dysfunction (Hill 1972). In fact,
individuals participating in any type of revolution have been seen as partaking in
a form of group neurosis. Neves-Manta (1942) holds this view, providing as
examples Russian, Spanish, and Spanish-American revolutions. During these
hostile outbursts, behavior of the "neurotic mass" was typified by such ten-
dencies as suggestibility, reckless courage, sadistic insanity, persecution
delusions, pyromania, kleptomania, orphemania (e.g., singing the Marseillaise
during the French revolution), and epidemic propagation of lies (mitomania).
Even the German Nazi movement has been interpreted as a form of group
psychopathology (Baynes 1941; Anonymous 1941), as has Japanese imperialism
during World War II (Norman 1945:65). Brown (1944:59) claims that "the
hysterical and paranoid tendencies" of Hitler were a form of collective insanity
which found "their counterparts in the reactions of the entire nation." More
recently, Cartwright and Biddiss (1972:208-210) view the allegiance to Hitler as
the product of a collective mental illness, a basic premise underlying the
contemporary 'Culture and Personality' critique of Nazism as pathological.
Ever since mass sightings of"flying saucers" were first reported worldwide in
1947, those claiming saucer-like perceptions of ambiguous aerial stimuli have
typically been branded as socially deviant or mentally ill based on the fantastic
nature of the claims, and not first-hand psychiatric evaluation. Despite the
unreliability of eyewitness testimony (Loftus and Palmer 1974; Wells and Turtle
1986), and the ambiguous nocturnal nature of most reports suggestive of
misinterpretations of mundane aerial stimuli, labels of 'abnormal' or 'crazy'
have been evoked by witness peers, the news media and social scientists
(Schwartz 1979). UFO witnesses, and non-witnesses who simply believe in the
existence of such objects, have often been classified as emotionally unbalanced
by social scientists reflecting this popular assumption. Keel (1975:871) applies a
psychoanalytic perspective to members of the "flying saucer subculture," and
classifies many members of flying saucer clubs as possessing "neurotic and
paranoid personalities." Both Jung (1959) and Meerloo (1967, 1968) believe
many experiences result from repressed, infantile sexually-oriented conflicts.
Both Smelser (1962:150) and Horton and Hunt (1976:380) view mass 'saucer'
sightings as irrational hysterical behavior. Other sociologists such as Buekner
(1968:226, 228) characterize typical members of flying saucer clubs as mentally
unbalanced:
...by any conventional definition the mental health...is quite low. Hallucinations are
quite common...If one were to attend a meeting and watch the action without knowing in
advance whether the audience was in a mental hospital or not, it would be very difficult
to tell, because many symptoms of serious illness are displayed.
This ethnocentric interpretation is not unlike Zilboorg's (1935:73) view of

persons alleged to be 'witches' as typically manifesting mental illness, a
contention which has been extensively criticized by Szasz (1970):
No doubt is left in our mind that the millions of witches, sorcerers, possessed and
obsessed were an enormous mass of severe neurotics, psychotics, and considerable
deteriorated organic deliria...for many years the world looked like a veritable insane
asylum ,~ithout a proper mental hospital.
Similar interpretations have been widely expressed in attempting to formulate
explanations for other types of collective epidemics, most notably psychogenic
illness. Mass 'sickness' judged to be psychosomatic in origin is typically viewed
as abnormal behavior, paralleling mental disorders. Symptoms commonly
involve one or a combination of complaints, and include: dizziness (Colligan
and Murphy 1979; Moffat 1982), fainting (Teoh and Tan 1972; Boulougouris et
al. 1981); stomach pain (Smith and Eastham 1973; Carter et al. 1989), nausea
(Polk 1974; Small and Borus 1983), twitching (Schuler and Parenton 1943;
Dhadphale and Shaikh 1983), malaise (McEvedy and Beard 1970), sore throat
and eyes (Levine et al. 1974), crying (Davy 1880; Helvie 1968), screaming
(Chew 1978; Poon 1982), paralysis (Johnson 1945; Nandi et al. 1985), depres-
sion (Ikeda 1966; Eastwell 1982), hyperventilation (Parigi 1956; Moss and
McEvedy 1966), abnormal body movements (Hugo 1881; Douglass 1944),
itching and rash (Maguire 1978; Robinson et al. 1984), running (Kagwa 1964),
laughing (Rankin and Philip 1963; Muhangi 1973), jumping (Beard 1880;
Thornton 1885), states of trance (Phoon 1982; Muluka et al. 1985) and posses-
sion (Teoh and Yeoh 1973; Teoh et al. 1975), hallucinations (Shapiro 1936; Lee
and Ackerman 1980), headache (Bebbington et al. 1980; Pollock and Clayton
1964), vomiting (Hirt 1892; Thomas and Krieger 1976), blindness (Mohr and
Bond 1982), foul mouth taste (Folland 1975), choking (Rawnsley and Loudon
1964; Christophersen 1946), muscle weakness (Shepard and Kroes 1975).
Most recently, Robertson (1987:547) interprets the American social reaction
to AIDS as "mass hysteria," as it involves collective "irrational fear of casual
infection." Despite major public health campaigns to dispel this belief, in some
instances,
police and other officials who might have to deal with AIDS patients were issued
protective gear, such as gloves and masks. Some people refused to work with an AIDS
victim, threatening to leave their jobs unless the person was fired. Camera crews walked
off the set of TV programs in which people with AIDS were to be interviewed. In some
places, notably New York City, many parents kept their children home from school rather
than risk having them come into contact with others infected with the disease - although,
since well over 1 million Americans were unknowingly carrying the AIDS virus at that
time [1985], the chance of such contact was at least as great in the street or department
store (547).
MASS HYSTERIA 467
Despite Robertson's depiction of "AIDS hysteria" as "irrational" and an

"absurdity," such behavior is normal, rational and predictable considering the
unique context of these AIDS misconceptions. Such circumstances include mass
media ignorance and sensationalism, the recency of its discovery in an age of
"miracle cures" and "wonder drugs," and the inability of health officials to
provide absolute assurances of the impossibility of casual transmission (Altman
1986).
CULTURE-BOUND 'DISORDERS' AND "EPIDEMIC HYSTERIA"
While culture-bound 'disorders' are typically considered as individual rather

than 'mass' behavior, collective episodes of amok, koro and latah have been
classified as culture-specific variations of "epidemic hysteria" (Sirois 1974:26).
Collective 'latah,' for instance, has been reported among an entire army of
Mongols (Yap 1951; Friedmann 1982:225), in addition to mass "latah-like"
behavior among North American Shakers (Friedmann 1982:225). Numerous
cases of behavior classified as collective amok have been recorded (Spores
1976:16 A~). Further, certain forms of arctic "hysteria" are considered con-
tagious (Linton 1956:115). The labeling of behavior such as amok (which
appears more individual than collective) as "epidemic hysteria" underscores the
lack of a generally agreed upon definition in the field, and the influence of
various diagnostic fashions and assumptions across a number of disciplines,
often moulded by the Zeitgeist and professional ideology. Also placed loosely
under the classification of "mass hysteria" is Hsieh-ping, a culture-bound state
of dissociated consciousness among Far Eastern Chinese (Tan 1972:8), which
can occur collectively. Pica and associative illnesses are considered forms of
"epidemic hysteria" (EastweU 1976, 1979), as are episodes of mass spirit
possession in Southeast Asia (Teoh 1972; Poon 1982).
So-called culture-bound syndromes are typically considered to be "unusual
forms of psychopathology that are confined to special [geographical] areas"
(Yap 1969:38), Manschreck and Petri (1978:234) typify a still prevalent
psychiatric view that all culture-bound 'syndromes' are local variations of
universally occurring psychotic states, and include amok in the same category as
"schizophreniform psychosis" and "prison psychosis." Simons (1980:205),
however, in commenting on the prevalence of latahlike responses in a variety of
cross-cultural settings views them in a more relativistic framework, as cultural
variations of learned roles involving "the culture-specific exploitation of a
neurophysiological potential shared by humans and other mammals." Given the
significant influence of cultural roles and beliefs on their manifestations,
culture-bound disorders are perhaps most accurately described as "a modern
myth created by P.M. Yap, written into textbooks and accepted as reality" (Lee
1990 Personal Communication).
Also misclassified as a culture-bound "psychosis" have been collective

sporadic "pica" (clay eating) 'epidemics' among Australian Aboriginals,
typically perceived by missionaries as "a behavioural aberration" (Taylor
1977:420). Even during recent times such behavior has been misinterpreted as a
form of "social pathology" (Eastwell 1979:272), involving a "perverted craving
of substances unfit for food" (Hochstein 1968). However, 'bizarre' episodes of
collective clay consumption coinciding with periods of rapid social change is
explainable within the Aboriginal symbol system, where clay is seen as
medicinal and used to increase lactation in breast-feeding mothers.
...the taste of clay was one of the first experiences of the Aboriginal child born in the
bush. Secondly, prepubertal girls were given practice for their future role by playing
"mother" with two breasts of large clay suspended by string and around their shoul-
ders .... It can also readily be used as a "pacifier." The psychological comfort of clay can
be traced to all these factors. Children camping at Benamanakra can still be seen covering
themselves with white clay, tasting some (Eastwell 1979:272).
Schmidt (1984:45) classifies the tendency of Australian Aboriginals to ex-

perience collective depression as "epidemic hysteria," as does Eastwell
(1976:89) in describing cases of "associative mental illness." Despite interpreta-
tions of collective psychopathology (Schmidt 1984:45), these seemingly
enigmatic outbreaks are rendered comprehensible within the framework of
Aboriginal semiotics (Eastwell 1982:237), which hold that within certain clans,
all members share the honor or disgrace of an act by one of its clan. Thus, any
offense by one member is considered as an offense by the whole o f the of-
fender's clan, with a subsequent feeling of guilt and shame (Webb 1934).
CONTEMPORARY TRENDS
The contemporary period has seen an increasing, but still minority emphasis on
the psycho-social nature of outbreaks which can involve any one or a combina-
tion of social, cultural and individual psychological factors, rejecting the view
that all, or even most of those affected were mentally ill (Frankel 1976:130).
Rosen (1962, 1968) typifies this position, viewing the historical and sociological
circumstances in which the behavior occurs as vital to understanding the stress
response:
It is important to investigate the psychological and social in relation to each
other...bizarre behavior exhibited in dance frenzies and similar phenomena...may
represent a critique of existing conditions, magical efforts to change those circumstances,
symbolic validation of expression of frustrated goals and repressed guilt...and not beg the
problem by interpreting the behavior as wholly irrational, pathological, or instinctive
(Rosen 1962:43).
It is my contention that the term "mass hysteria" is a social fabrication of

objectivists; it serves as a form o f mystification, detracting attention from the
MASS HYSTERIA 469
social patterning of episodes. In short, while "mass hysteria" per se is a problem

of society or some of its members, confusion surrounding the term is "a
'problem' of the researcher created for his subjects" (Lee 1988 Personal
Communication), and needs to be interpreted within a relativistic framework
stressing sociocultural context. In arguing for a culturally relativistic approach to
comprehensively understanding "mass hysteria," I will briefly outline the
theoretical program of Geertz (1973), and demonstrate the fruitfulness of an
interpretive approach in relation to the muddled history of collective 'hysteria.'
GEERTZ'S SEMIOTIC INTERPRETIVE APPROACH
The term "mass hysteria" encompasses various actions typically viewed as

bizarre, crazy, deviant, psychopathological, abnormal, and irrational. This label
has been ascribed to behavior spanning diverse time periods and sociocultural
settings, with most analysis transpiring during the past two centuries. The
majority of investigators have and continue to focus on personality profiles of
participants, and on ambiguous social and structural strains which resulted in the
particular form of "group pathology" under scrutiny. Such objectivist methods
have resulted in no clear trends. For instance, while some researchers have
found that administration of standardized personality inventories among victims
and non-victims indicates that participants possessed more tendencies toward
hysterical traits (Knight et al. 1965; Colligan and Murphy 1979), paranoia
(Goldberg 1973) and neuroticism (Moss 1966; Moss and McEvedy 1966;
McEvedy et al. 1966; McEvedy and Beard 1973), others have found no
significant pathological correlations (Olson 1928; Olczak et al. 1971; Teoh and
Yeoh 1973; Tam et al. 1982). This objectivist approach emphasizing naturalistic
methodologies fails to take as problematic the relationship of psychometric
variables to the overall sociocultural context of which they are one part.
Interpretive anthropology offers a more promising approach, as it operates in
the tradition of reality as socially constructed. In shifting from aspiring to
apprehend absolute reality, this framework is better able to deal with the
contextual interpretation of "stresses" and "strains" within "mass hysteria"
episodes. Interpretive theory provides an improved understanding of the
heterogenous set of social and psychological phenomena that has been lumped
under a convenient unitary heading, and in doing so, reveals "mass hysteria" to
be a social construction, invented and maintained within the 'local' context of
Westem psychiatry.
Central to both Geertz and to Berger and Luckman is the verstehen tradition
and an effort to understand and appreciate the unique realities of all cultures as
reflected in everyday language, overtly or symbolically. In The Social Construc-
tion o f Reality (1967), Berger and Luckman reverse positivist assumptions
concerning the existence of an objective, knowable reality, noting that these are
predicated on a view - albeit a "scientific" one - that there exists a taken-for-
granted world of one true reality. Instead of focusing on the object, they place
the inquiry of all social sciences on the subject. Hence, while the natural
sciences examine the true nature of nonhistorical inanimate "objects," they
contend that the "social" sciences should emphasize the non-reducible subjec-
tive nature of its basic unit of study: the human being. This perspective under-
scores the importance of socially constructed intersubjective meanings and rules
of human action as comprising the social structure. This approach offers a
unique insight into the world views of collective 'hysterics.'
Geertz (1973, 1984) has developed an interpretive approach to the social
sciences, involving semiotic phenomenological interpretations of society
predicated on evaluating a sequence of events from various perspectives and
deciphering master symbolic codes. "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cock-
fight" (1973) typifies his approach, viewing culture as a text analogue, with
action interpreted within the broader context of the actors' cultural world. By
scrutinizing a series of cockfights, Geertz demonstrates the influence of a variety
of seemingly unrelated symbols and institutions embedded within Balinese
culture and embodied within the cockfight.
Geertz's semiotic approach is particularly applicable to deciphering the
master codes of behavior that appears foreign, such as that described as "mass
hysteria." Geertz demonstrates the inapplicability of naturalistic methods for
understanding the sophisticated intersubjective dimensions of the Balinese
symbolic universe. If one used reductionist methodologies to analyze Balinese
cockfighting, the deeper meaning of the activity would not only be m~s-
construed, but appear irrational. Far worse than merely failing to grasp the
overall significance of the event, such methods produce misunderstanding, as
has happened with universalist studies of "epidemic hysteria." The deeper
underlying behavioral relativity, impenetrable from the naturalist perspective, is
comprehensible only through a verstehen approach. Geertz (1973:5) thus views
cultural analysis as a search for meaning, not laws. "The sociology of
knowledge ought to be called the sociology of meaning, for what is socially
determined is not the nature of conception but the vehicles for conception."
While criticized for employing excessively abstract and cryptographic
semiotics (Peacock 1981:129; Roseberry 1982; Keesing 1982) and an open-
ended culture-as-text analysis that is too dependent upon the interpreters'
idiosyncrasies and literary imagination (Shankman 1984; de Ruijter 1984;
Brintnall 1984; Lieberson 1984; Crapanzano 1986; Schneider 1987), critics are
unable to construct a substitute approach equivalent in potential for the apprehen-
sion of contextual and intersubjective meanings. Natural science methods may
yield more insight into the nature and composition of nonhistorical entities, but
the dynamic and transient images of man are irreducible to empirical controls,
MASS HYSTERIA 471
replications and measurements. Cultural analysis is not confinable to cause and

effect rules, predictable outcomes and utilization of the 'correct' ruling
paradigm from which to base assumptions. As Farrer (1984:274) notes:
Geertz agrees with the new physicists who say light is both wave and particle depending
upon one's viewpoint and how the experiment is set up. The context and interpretation,
and the content as well, thus become crucial, while rules and prediction fade from
interest. The emerging nature of both the data...and the understanding of them require a
processional orientation rather than a product perspective based upon cause and effect or
stimulus and response.
An example of the utility of an interpretive or semiotic approach, and the

potential dangers in noncontextual analysis of 'foreign' actions is illustrated by
the apparent misclassiflcation of the "windigo psychosis" among the North
American subarctic Algonkian Indians. Marano (1982) reviewed the voluminous
literature on the subject and agrees with Turner (1982) that "windigo myths are
symbolic expressions of the inadequacy of Cree living arrangements under
conditions of environmental stress' that make sense 'only in terms of the actual
on-the-ground socioeconomic relations of living people."
Although "windigo psychosis" has served as a classic example of culture-bound
psychopathology for almost half a century, five years' field experience...extensive
archival research, and a critical examination of the literature indicate that there probably
never were any windigo psychotics in an ethic/behavior sense. When...considered from
the point of view of group sociodynamics rather than from that of individual
psychodynamics, the crucial question is not what causes a person to become a cannibalis-
tic maniac, but under what circumstances a Northern Algonkian is likely to be accused of
having become a cannibalistic maniac and thus run the risk of being executed as such. It
is argued that those so executed were victims of triage homicide or witch hunts, events
common in societies under stress. It is shown that there is no reliable evidence for
psychotic cannibalism in the windigo literature, and it is held that the "psychosis" is an
artifact of research which failed to distinguish the emics of thought from the etics of
behavior (Marano 1982:365).
Ridington (1988:98) uses Marano's research as a platform from which to

criticize the use of an uninformed ethnocentric approach which has dominated
the causal debate about the "psychosis," especially when such a perspective
removes "ethnographic information about the subarctic people from the context
in which it is known, learned, and communicated." Ridington thus concludes
that armchair theorists have the potential to become ethnocentric when they fail
to "reflect the thoughtworlds of the people we study as well as those of our own
academic traditions" (98). Similar ethnocentric, noncontextual approaches to
evaluating collective hysteria continue to be the rule.
The primary weakness o f the interpretive paradigm for understanding "mass
hysteria" is its underemphasis on the influence of economic and political
processes. Ong (1987) provides a relevant example. 3 In demonstrating the
effects of capitalist development on episodes of spirit possession among Malay
women in transition "from peasant society to industrial production," Ong (1987:
216) notes how such behavior Ican "challenge imposed Western categories of
rationality." Ong is critical of Geertz's failure to address "the question of power
in the production, definition, and maintenance of dominant cultural patterns" (2)4
A modified interpretive approach which considers such factors within the
overall sociocultural context appears most fruitful in demystifying 'hysterical'
episodes. The strength of Geertz's interpretive method is its human orientation,
its focus on what a particular culture holds as objective reality rather than
reductionist variables. Geertz ultimately seeks to explicate context and cultural
universes via introspective methods that interpret meaning; not to pass judge-
ment by creating behaviorist laws or realist illusions of universals. To miss this
point is to miss the soul of the interpretive argument.
RELATIVISM AND 'MASS HYSTERIA'
Geertz's methodology is sensitive to the circumstances and events surrounding

the attachment of meaning to seemingly bizarre or abnormal episodes of
collective behavior, and can be used to explain the diverse interpretations and
labels ascribed to 'hysterical' episodes, exemplifying how certain groups
construct unique realities based on their particular historical, social and cultural
niche. Historically, any cultural milieu differing from Western standards of
"normality" have typically been viewed as exhibiting mentally ill or irrational
behavior. Ironically, such standards are predicated on the same processes
through which the "irrational" behavior under scrutiny was created. Viewing
absolute "objective reality" as unattainable, this study is concerned with the
relativity of knowledge and reality. Such "reality" is a chameleon which varies
according to socio-historical and cultural circumstances.
Several theoretical schools advocate anti-positivist approaches: symbolic
interactionism (Mead 1962; Rose 1962; Blumer 1969), the dramaturgical
method (Goffman 1963, 1967), ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967), eth-
nogenetics (Harre and Secord 1972), and phenomenology (Schutz 1967; Winch
1958; Berger and Luckman 1967). While these schools emphasize different
methods, they share a fundamental verstehen tradition in recognizing the
importance of subjective human meanings and the social and cultural context
from which such meanings are derived. The methods developed by such schools
provide a strong rebuff to critics claiming Geertz's methods are too open-ended
and subject to the researcher's ethnocentricity, idiosyncrasies and imagination
(Shankman 1984; Crapanzano 1986; Schneider 1987). Far from judging "mass
hysteria" ethnocentrically, those working in the Geertzian paradigm would seek
to record actions as described by the witnesses at the time, within historical
soeiocultural context, not to provide analysis of behavior per se.
A classic example of the failure to utilize contextual methodologies is
MASS HYSTERIA 473
exemplified in the evocation of psychopathological language to characterize

mass adherence to Hitler's Nazism as group pathology, which is both inap-
propriate and misleading. While not advocating the destructive and immoral
imposition of a charismatic movement on parts of or whole societies, of which
history is replete, it is my contention that collective support for Nazism is more
comprehensible when examined within the context of the voluminous literature
demonstrating the impact of group and sociocultural norms on conformity
(Sherif and Harvey 1952; Asch 1955; Zimbardo 1972; Phillips 1979). Kren
(1978:414-415) and Asher (1979) both take this position.
The analysis of torture and killing is also applicable to evaluations of 16th and
17th century witch hunts. Despite interpretations of persons labeled as "witches"
as mentally ill or deviant (Zilboorg 1935), cultural relativism emphasizing
contextual understanding is viewed as necessary to interpreting such actions
(Schoeneman 1977; Neugebauer 1978; Spanos 1978). Relative to psycho-
pathological interpretations of witchcraft phenomena, numerous researchers note
"the absolutism and ethnocentricity involved in evaluating historical events such
as the witch hunts in terms of modern constructions of reality" and the failure to
take a relativistic position that considers "past beliefs and actions in terms of the
historical, social, and intellectual contexts in which they were imbedded"
(Schoeneman 1982:1030). A similar relativistic framework should prove fruitful
in understanding "mass hysteria."
CONCLUSION
The concept "mass hysteria" has changed constantly, in relation to the historical,
sociocultural, and scientific milieu of the researcher. Analysis of the broad field
of diverse behavior labded under this rubric is riddled with problematic
universalist assumptions as to the manifestation of transcultural mental disor-
ders, and represents a "category fallacy." The imposition of Western culture-
bound illness categories on 'deviant' behavior from cultures with significantly
different social realities, "semantic networks" and symbol systems, fosters "the
erroneous belief that deviance can be studied in different societies independent
of specific cultural norms and local patterns of normative behavior" (Kleinman
1977:4). Thus, while all cross-cultural studies of psychopathology should begin
with thorough cultural accounts, this is a rarity in the 'hysteria' literature.
Usage of the term "mass hysteria" should be discontinued. It is an imaginary
mental disorder invented by Western psychiatry. The creation of this term has
served to conveniently catagorize a heterogenous group of social and psychologi-
cal phenomena without providing significant consideration to the complexities
of transcultural realities. The term collective exaggerated emotions is a more
appropriate label When examining future episodes of collective exaggerated

emotions, researchers should focus not on the behavior per se, but the stimulus
for the exaggerated emotions which became self-fulfilling, and the relation of
the stimulus to the participants word-view. Future manifestations of exag-
gerated emotions, as in the past, will continue to change, be it in the form of
fads, psychogenic illness or social movements, as they involve arbitrary social
constructions, limited only by plausibility. This perspective allows a more
meaning-oriented observer to view a multitude of subtle, complex and distinctly
separate phenomena. What is needed is to examine these diverse behaviors
contextually and semiotically. This cannot be accomplished quickly, as there are
serious doubts, particularly in historical instances, as to what behavior observers
were actually describing. By beginning to use an interpretive approach, however
we run much less risk of misinterpreting culture-specific collective behavior as
deviant, irrational, or psychopathological. Unfortunately, all three notions
remain prevalent, particularly in psychiatry. Any interpretive approach should
consider the role of individual and structural factors, but only within the overall
sociocultural framework.
Bourgeois medicine, particularly psychiatry, continues to reflect the erroneous
and outdated assumption that collective psychopathology exists per se and is
most prevalent among certain groups, such as those of low social and/or
economic status (Calmeil 1845; Aemmer 1893; Bleuler 1924; Baumann 1939;
Johnson 1945; Kagwa 1964; Esquirol 1965; Faigel 1968; Kok 1975; Merskey
1979:177; Wessely 1987:116), 'primitive' (Kretschmer and Strauss 1952) or
tribal peoples (Ebrahim 1968:438), those from developing countries (Dhadphale
and Shaikh 1983:85), and the implication of innate female susceptibility (Lang
and Lang 1961:227; Rawnsley and Loudon 1964:839; Tan 1972:8; Trethowan
1983:208; Hill, Murray and Thorley 1986:237; Black 1987:352). It is no
coincidence that with rare exception (i.e., financial booms and panics, fads,
social movements), white males of high socioeconomic status from developed
Western countries have enjoyed relative immunity from 'hysterical' outbreaks,
as they have constructed the arbitrary parameters as to what constitutes nor-
mality. The changing symptomatology of culture-bound 'syndromes' (Murphy
1972; Temoshok and Attkisson 1977:196-197), individual 'hysteria' (Gallinek
1942:42; Mayou 1975:466) and "epidemic hysteria" (Sirois 1974:15;
1982:221-222) not only reflect paradigm shifts in diagnosis and treatment of
individual and collective 'pathology,' they mirror changing roles and world-
views of 'victims.' Being of low socioeconomic status or a particular ethnicity
per se does not render one more susceptible to 'hysterical epidemics,' but the
unique conduct codes and phenomenological realities that such people hold are
likely to foster the label of collective pathology in the eyes of bourgeois
researchers who find it difficult to empathise with and frame non-culture and
status-bound diagnostic questions pertaining to the absolute belief in sig-
nificantly different world-views.
MASS HYSTERIA 475
The present state of chaos in the study of collective exaggerated emotions is

the direct result of noncontextual, ethnocentric natural science methodologies
and assumptions regarding normality. This is not to disregard the voluminous
studies detailing individual psychological correlates of victims versus nonvic-
tims. While such factors are undeniable, they are typically a result, not a sole or
necessarily primary cause, of complex social-psychological and cultural webs of
significance. Clearly, the most common single cause attributed to 'hysterical'
episodes is the presence of some type of stress. An interpretive anthropological
approach to analyzing collective exaggerated emotions has been fruitfully used
by Lee (1979) and Lee and Ackerman (1980) in understanding endemic "mass
hysteria" in Malaysia. By viewing stress "as a matter of definition in a specific
sociocultural context rather than as an objective given from which predictions
can be made," attention focuses on how victims and nonvictims retrospectively
interpret "stressfull" events (Lee and Ackerman 1980:79).
A sociocultural explanation entails (1) examining how an episode of mass hysteria is
explained by the observers, victims, and community-at-large, and (2) analyzing the
consequences of these interpretations. In sum, this approach [starts with]...the interpreta-
tion of acts, and analyzes how subsequent behavior is shaped by the perception of events
within a cultural setting (Lee and Ackerman 1980:79).
A semiotic revolution is badly needed to make more precise topologies of the

collective exaggerated emotions. Two examples may illustrate. Take the case of
mass screaming and fainting which is typically explained in terms of individual
personality correlates. Such cases can appear bizarre on their surface. Consider
the case of ten female Malaysian Islamic students sitting in a care just prior to
taking an important exam. Suddenly one begins to scream, cry and collapse.
Within minutes, all ten have collapsed, continuing to scream while lying
prostrate on the floor. To most Westerners this behavior seems enigmatic,
almost crazy. A reductionist approach would typically seek to explain the
behavior in terms of neurotic personality traits or the unleashing of repressed
emotions during exam stress. It could be theorized that the students were
actually involved in a collective conversion reaction enabling them to avoid the
test. Yet, broadly similar episodes of this nature occur frequently in Malaysia.
While the neurotic tendencies of certain participants play a role, in addition to
test-related stress, there are many students with neurotic tendencies under exam
stress worldwide who rarely if ever react in this manner. An understanding of
the underlying sociocultural dynamics is fundamental to explaining the events
on a macroscopic level. For instance, Malay females, particularly Islamic
fundamentalists, typically consider themselves the weaker sex (mentally) and
accordingly, more vulnerable to the actions of an array of Islamic spirits which
they know are real. If one of the group suddenly feels a sharp stress-related neck
pain and simultaneously perceives an insect in a waste basket as an evil spirit,
they might automatically believe they have been 'hexed' or 'charmed.' Believ-
ing in the absolute reality of such beings, and knowing some evil outcome will
result, screaming and crying is an acceptable behavior for a female Malay. Her 9
friends, all devout Muslims, immediately and nonverbally assume their friend
has been 'hexed' or 'charmed,' and that being her friend, they too will be
targets. One by one each group member succumbs. Far from collective pathol-
ogy, an understanding of the Malaysian fundamentalist female symbol system
allows such 'bizarre' behavior to be interpreted as 'normal,' within the context
of conformity to emergent norms.
Chan and Wong (1983) have fruitfully used an interpretive approach in their
analysis of 4 outbreaks of screaming and trance-like hysterical attacks in
Singaporian factories. Of 108 workers affected, 107 were female. A strong
correlation was noted between ethnicity, supernatural world-view and the
episode. All but 3 of the affected workers professed to being Muslim, Hindu or
Buddhist, who all practice animistic beliefs. Malays reported the highest number
of 'attacks' (88), followed by Hindu (13) and Buddhist (1). Only two of those
affected were Chinese, although they compose a major portion of the popula-
tion. The form of the outbreak does not appear directly attributable to being
female per se, but the social context of the female role in this area of the world
during the particular time period of the episode (Lee 1981:239). It is also
explainable in terms of the varying intensity of animistic beliefs between the
affected groups.
...[intensity of animistic beliefs appears highest among Malays] and may reflect
differences in the socialization process...the Malay child is told stories of the powers of
evil spirits and taught to avoid certain dark places, such as cemeteries. Evil spirits are
often used as threats when the child misbehaves. This could explain the deep-seated
animistic beliefs of the Malays and their intense subconscious fear of evil spirits.
Most Indians (whether Hindu, Muslim or Christian) are brought up to believe in spirit
possession and spirit mediums. In the social context of Singapore Hinduism, there is
nothing remarkable about...trance states, with many ordinary devotees entering into such
states during certain ceremonies.
The Chinese, on the other hand, usually threaten their children with corporal punish-
ment or the police. They seem to approach "dealings" with spirits and deities [with
business-like pragmatism]. The element of fear and lack of control over the powers of
evil spirits is less obvious. This may explain their relative "immunity" to hysterical
behavior (Chan and Wong 1983:60--61).
A semiotic approach can also be fruitful in understanding Southeast Asian koro

outbreaks. In the midst of widespread rumors of episodes about to transpire,
many males become acutely anxious, believing their penis to be shrinking, while
females report their breasts or vulva are getting smaller. Anxiety-related
physiological complaints typically accompany 'victims.' Koro 'epidemics' have
been interpreted as a 'culture-bound' syndrome and psychopathological. Yap
(1965:49) uses a reductionistic approach noting that those most susceptible are
young, poorly educated men with immature, dependent personalities lacking in
sexual confidence. A Geertzian contextual analysis emphasizes the sociocultural
MASS HYSTERIA 477
world-view of 'victims.' To Westemers, koro-related anxiety can appear

deviant, irrational or psychopathological. Yet, to many Southeast Asians with
extensive traditions in the reality of koro (Gwee 1963), a belief held by some
Chinese physicians as recently as 1967 (Gwee 1968), rumors of its local
manifestation often ignite widespread 'attacks.' For instance, the existence of
koro as an absolute fact is found in several old Chinese medical texts. It is
important to examine koro as a psychogenic anxiety state related to body image
and sexual function, considering the "sociodynamic factors" involved in the
genesis of such phenomena (Jilek and Jilek-Aall 1977). In most cases 'victims'
return to a normal state of health soon after being convinced the 'illness' is over
or never existed. Even if a particular case persists for months or years, and
certain personality traits or mental disorders are uncovered, koro per se is not
responsible. In this context it is a triggering mechanism for some potentially
serious mental disorder. In the same manner, the mourning of a spouse's death is
not considered a mental illness. Yet, if this death triggers a depressive state that
eventuates into a severe vegetative condition which persists for many years
within a particular individual, then the death event can contribute to the
eventuation of a pathological condition.
How should we explain Berrois and Morley's (1984) finding of koro
symptoms within 15 non-Chinese subjects from widely disperse geographical
locations who reported no prior knowledge of koro-related folk beliefs? While
superficially appearing to support Simons and Highes' (1985) contention of the
existence of an underlying biological etiology, a social conditioning thesis is
capable of accounting for such cases. As few people are experts in perceptual
psychology or conformity dynamics, both individuals and groups from various
cultural backgrounds typically overscrutinize rumor-related objects in the
environment, with and without extensive local traditions relating to such rumors.
Several episodes of this nature have been erroneously labeled as "mass hys-
teria." Classic examples include the reinterpretation of mundane aerial
phenomena in the wake of a perceived Martian invasion (Cantril 1940),
everpresent windshield damage (Medalia and Larsen 1958), incidental body cuts
(Jacobs 1965), pedestrian odors and body sensations (Johnson 1945).
The imposition of contemporary Western notions of mental illness and
normality to judge behavior of other cultures or time periods risks potentially
gross misunderstanding of the behavior under scrutiny, underestimating the
creative human capacity for diverse cultural interpretations. Toward this end,
cultural relativism offers a fruitful approach to decoding various types of
'foreign' behavior "which do justice to the complexity of their subject matter,
analyses which are multidisciplinary, cross-cultural, and faithful to events,
conditions, times, and places which have influenced past human behavior"
(Schoeneman 1982:1031). Future cross-cultural psychiatric analysis and
identification of the various sub-categories of behavior that have been er-
roneously lumped together as "mass hysteria," using contemporary Western

culture-bound empiricist notions o f normality and illness, must focus on
decoding "semantic networks" (Good 1977) and "detailed local phenomenologi-
cal descriptions" (Kleinman 1977) that allow observers to interpret various
behaviors "from the native's point o f view." Understood in this vein, application
o f a phenomenological sociology of knowledge perspective to the various
meanings ascribed to behavior classified as "mass hysteria" allows for a non-
ethnocentric descriptive analysis that is sensitized to and tolerant of, multicul-
tural beliefs and expressions. In most instances these perceptions do not
represent behavior that is bizarre, irrational, deviant, abnormal, or
psychopathological. Instead, they allow us to appreciate what it means to be
human - and different.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful for the comments o f m y anonymous reviewers, and the critical

clarifying suggestions o f Byron G o o d and R a y m o n d L. Lee. I would also like to
thank Allan Patience and Robert Holton for suggesting the overall theoretical
framework, and Peter Dickinson for proof-reading.
NOTES
1 Remarkably similar episodes of this nature which have been labeled as "mass hysteria"
include behavior associated with the annual ancient Roman Saturnalia celebrations, the
Japanese Tokugawa era, the Brazillian Canudos rebellion, and the Madagascar political
turmoil of 1863 (Norman 1945: 68; Sirois 1974).
2 Glossolalia has been viewed as an "abnormality" (Kelsey 1984: 206) and a sign of
psychological instability (Christie-Murray 1978: 199). A disproportionately high number
of glossolalics have been rated as unusually tense and insecure (Farrell 1963), with the
poor, illiterate and socially deprived appearing more vulnerable (Christie-Murray 1978:
212). However, less ethnocentric, contextual studies view glossolalia as learned behavior
(Samarin 1969) which can be engaged in by anyone (Samarin 1972), communicated via
ritual (Hutch 1980).
3 My thanks to Byron Good for suggesting the applicability of this study.
4 Ackerman (1988: 218) is critical of Ong's "overly simplified" monolithic portrayal of
the relationship between "mass hysteria" and Malay resistance to dehumanizing capitalist
discipline.
Outbreaks of individual or mass hysteria at schools, sports meets, drama groups and
public sector work settings with which I am familiar bespeak interpersonal conflict
lacking a definite class character. In the most general sense, hysteria and spirit possession
can be characterized as an idiom of interpersonal conflict which occurs in a range of
social contexts, typically those where Malays predominate.
MASS HYSTERIA 479
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ROBERT E.

ETHNOCENTRICITY AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF

...interpretive anthropology directly addresses the world in which

A wide variety o f collective behavior has been classified as "mass hysteria."

Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 14: 455-494, 1990.

disagreements as to what behavior the term encompasses. Many authors ignore

construing social expressions on their surface enigmatical.

Geertz's concept of knowledge as a cultural construction parallels Berger and

"disruption" (Lindesmith and Strauss 1968) or "out of joint" (Smelser 1962).

Collective contagious behavior labeled as "mass hysteria"

Salem 'witch' hunts (Starkey 1949; Bonfanti 1977)

Instead of viewing a particular form of "mass hysteria" within the context of

The variety of terms used to identify the sources of "mass hysteria"

Psychic epidemic (Hecker 1843)

The variety of terms used to identify the sources of "mass hysteria"

Hysterical psychosis (Langness 1965)

THE INTELLECTUAL ROOTS OF THE CONTEMPORARY

During the mid-19th century, Rudolf Virchow developed an influential theory of

Melanesian 'cargo cults,' various authors have described these phenomena as a

Hempenstall (1981:2) takes a relativistic position, noting how "in the

Medieval millenarian participants have been viewed as suffering from group

forms of "self-torturing" in expectation of spiritual reward have occurred in

This ethnocentric interpretation is not unlike Zilboorg's (1935:73) view of

Despite Robertson's depiction of "AIDS hysteria" as "irrational" and an

CULTURE-BOUND 'DISORDERS' AND "EPIDEMIC HYSTERIA"

While culture-bound 'disorders' are typically considered as individual rather

Also misclassified as a culture-bound "psychosis" have been collective

Schmidt (1984:45) classifies the tendency of Australian Aboriginals to ex-

It is my contention that the term "mass hysteria" is a social fabrication of

social patterning of episodes. In short, while "mass hysteria" per se is a problem

GEERTZ'S SEMIOTIC INTERPRETIVE APPROACH

The term "mass hysteria" encompasses various actions typically viewed as

replications and measurements. Cultural analysis is not confinable to cause and

An example of the utility of an interpretive or semiotic approach, and the

Ridington (1988:98) uses Marano's research as a platform from which to

RELATIVISM AND 'MASS HYSTERIA'

Geertz's methodology is sensitive to the circumstances and events surrounding

exemplified in the evocation of psychopathological language to characterize

appropriate label When examining future episodes of collective exaggerated

The present state of chaos in the study of collective exaggerated emotions is

A semiotic revolution is badly needed to make more precise topologies of the

A semiotic approach can also be fruitful in understanding Southeast Asian koro

world-view of 'victims.' To Westemers, koro-related anxiety can appear

roneously lumped together as "mass hysteria," using contemporary Western

I am grateful for the comments o f m y anonymous reviewers, and the critical

Benaim, S., J. Horder and J. Anderson

Cartwright, F.F. and M.D. Biddiss

Lyons, H.A. and P.E. Poter

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