Dancing with the Devil
Hysteria usually calls to mind thoughts of the Salem Witch Trials and delirious frenzies from history. However, mass hysteria, or mass psychogenic illness, is not simply an improbable, incomprehensible madness of the past. It has occurred throughout history and into our current generation, taking form as dancing plagues , dissociative possession of nuns , and involuntary twitches of high school girls in New York . Is it something they all ate? Or maybe there is something in the water… How is it that anxiety manifests itself into a dance that spreads among populations? Fear and distress terrorized populations in Medieval Europe and made them more prone to psychogenic illness . Certainly it seems there must be more to the story than merely these common denominators, for fear, anguish, stress, and trauma are commonly faced and dealt with sans mass hysteria. But the other factors needed for the exact formula of mass hysteria are difficult to pinpoint. Is it the perfect combination o...