This book tackles a very difficult and little-researched topic, episodes of mass hysteria in school contexts. The authors use a cross-disciplinary approach to examine a wide range of episodes from around the world and from many different time periods, going back to sixteenth century Europe. They focus on the social factors that lead to and shape these episodes, and argue that seemingly bizarre actions can be made intelligible by placing them in their cultural and social context. Thus mass hysteria in Africa often revolves around fear of witchcraft, whereas in western contexts the triggers are typically fears of pollution or terrorism.
The authors have brought together a large number of case studies from all corners of the globe. Most are twentieth or twenty-first century cases, with the older cases coming from Europe. They define mass hysteria in terms of conversion disorder, a concept devised by Freud that describes the conversion of psychological conflict and trauma into aches and pains that have no physical basis. For example, false alarms involving gas leaks may produce feelings of headache, dizziness and over-breathing. Under certain conditions, this hysteria may spread from one individual to another and develop into a mass phenomenon. The authors argue that schools are fertile grounds for the growth of rumours and social delusions, especially when adolescents rather than younger children are involved. Girls are much more likely to suffer mass hysteria than boys.
While recognising that this is a pioneering work in the field, especially from a social science perspective, the book suffers from a number of problems. It places great emphasis on the importance of the social context, but most of the case studies are very brief – which leaves little scope for placing the episodes of mass hysteria in a meaningful context. There are plausible explanations presented in many cases – the best examples are the Malaysian case studies in Chapter 3 and the Papua New Guinea episode in Chapter 6 – but in general there are limits to an adequate elaboration of the social context. For example, witchcraft features in many of the cases discussed, particularly in early modern Europe and in Africa, but there is little reference to the large body of literature on this topic from both of these contexts. From a history of education perspective, the situation is particularly disappointing. The earliest school discussed is a Catholic orphanage school in Amsterdam in 1566, and many other schools from later centuries are featured, but there is hardly any discussion of how formal education has changed over these centuries – what sort of people went to school, who ran these schools, when education became compulsory, when schooling became a mass phenomenon rather than the preserve of a small elite, whether the students were the first generation within their families to attend school, and so on. A major thesis of the book is that mass hysteria is most likely to develop in schools with very strict discipline and rote learning methods, and that it results from pent-up stress with which the students cannot deal in any other way. The argument is plausible, and examples of this strict discipline are provided, but the thesis needs to be more thoroughly documented to make it convincing.
There are also problems with the analytical framework. The authors state that they only use the term “mass hysteria” to describe conversion disorder, and nothing more. They note that hysteria can be used inappropriately to describe a wide range of behaviours, and they rule out communist “Red” scares or Martian invasion panic (p. 4) as irrelevant. Yet communist scares provide part explanations in at least two places (pp. 24-25, 174) and a Malaysian case study on pages 161-165 revolves around reported sightings of UFOs. The concept of mass hysteria requires clearer elaboration. Conversion disorder is an individual phenomenon, and the transition from this individual condition to a mass phenomenon is poorly theorised. Moreover a number of other concepts are introduced in an ad hoc way throughout the book. For example, on page 25 “mass hysteria” (conversion disorder) is contrasted with “social hysteria”, which is described in terms of community panics; the two types of hysteria are said to overlap in many cases. Social hysteria or community panic seems to be part of the context that explains mass hysteria, but the relationship is hardly discussed at all. On pages 87, the term “anxiety hysteria” is introduced, but without any further discussion. Some of the case studies do not fit well within the concept of mass hysteria as defined by the authors – for example, the Malay students seeing tiny alien beings (pp. 161-165) or in another case “fairies” (pp. 165-168), neither of which involved any significant conversion disorders.
The final chapter is titled “Global Lessons”. There are some useful conclusions drawn – the need to make sense of the outbreaks in terms of the social and cultural context; mass hysteria as a reaction to strict forms of discipline where students endure great stress but have no way of expressing their feelings; how mass hysteria often develops in a context involving two contrasting world views (traditional and western, for example, where teachers and parents may have a strict traditionalist view but the students are aware of more liberal alternatives); and the dangers involved in making a diagnosis of mass hysteria – something that goes down very poorly with parents. The chapter also runs through a number of explanations of mass hysteria, from the perspectives of psychoanalysis, sociology, social psychology, biology and anthropology. These are very brief accounts and do not add much to the analysis. Gender is briefly discussed, but not very systematically given its obvious importance.
The way forward for a social science analysis of mass hysteria is to narrow the focus drastically and to provide a much more thorough discussion of the cultural, social and educational context. A national focus would be appropriate. This would facilitate a detailed discussion of the educational context, along the lines mentioned above, as well as the broader social context. In turn, this might allow a more rigorous and nuanced analysis of the reasons behind these apparently strange behaviours.
