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.

The Social Psychology of 'Epidemic' Koro

“…The label of 'mass hysteria' has been inappropriately applied to a variety of hetergeneous transcultural behaviors in an attempt to categorize what is typically viewed as abnormal, deviant or bizarre by Western-trained social scientists, within a convenient and unitary psychiatric rubric which is both pejorative and ethnocentric (Bartholomew, 1990a). Such evaluations typically ignore or underemphasize the complexities of evaluating cultures and subcultures possessing social realities that differ significantly from those of the researcher.'…”

On the origin of mass casualty incidents in Kosovo, Yugoslavia, in 1990

“…It would be highly improbable that in the most reputable medical institution in the former Yugoslavia, and the only one where the victims of this epidemic had been comprehensively and properly examined, no one had ever heard about more than one hundred epidemics of mass hysteria which took place over the 100 years prior to 1974 [22], or of several major outbreaks described in the medical literature since that time [21,[23][24][25]. The formulation given above may be understood, therefore, as an attempt to maintain professional reputation of the Clinical Centre, without getting too much involved into other nations' conflicts.…”

“…Many of them, containing descriptors such as 'psychosis' [35], 'madness' [36], 'psychotic' and 'folie' [37], as well as 'hysteria' [22,27,38], point to an overt psychiatric disorder. In practice, however, there is little evidence that more than a tiny proportion of all cases, if any, are mentally ill [23,26,39].…”

“…The term 'collective exaggerated emotions' was also suggested, with the point that researchers examining such episodes 'should focus not on the behavior but on the stimulus for the exaggerated emotions which became self-fulfilling, and the relation of the stimulus to the participants world-view' [23], since 'mass hysterias represent culture-specific idioms of negotiation, covert political protest, deviant social roles, rituals, and the psychosomatic consequences of particular world-views or cultural contexts' [44].…”

Epidemic Hysteria: School Outbreaks 1973–1993

“…Yet such outbreaks were labeled under an ever wider array of designations and subject to controversy from various sources. (Bartholomew [3] has found 75 names under which epidemic hysteria has been reported.) It became an ideal topic for the politics of knowledge [4].…”