Essays on Mass Hysteria

Mass hysteria and sociogenic illness have been an important part of history. Starting from the 16th century in Salem, Massachusetts with the Salem Witch Trials to something more modern such as the LeRoy Girls of New York in 2012. Over the years, mass sociogenic illness...

Hysteria is best described as the reverse placebo effect. Hippocrates in the 5th century BC was the first to use the term hysteria. He also believed that the cause of this disease lies in the movement of the uterus. Hysteria has been around for a...

The well fabled Salem Witch Trials took place around 1692, in a time and place copious of hysteria, condemnation and prosecution. During this early modern time period, science and the elements of the renaissance had already been taken to a place where it had not...

Stereotypes are one of the most prominent groupthink symptoms. According to Irving Janis in Groupthink, “the victims of groupthink hold stereotyped views of enemy groups: they are so evil that genuine attempts at negotiating differences with them are unwarranted…” (pp. 366) There were various stereotypes...

The Salem Witch Trials represented a corporeal emulation of base human nature. New Historicism views the trials as both a product and result of the social, political, and religious climates seen in the seventeenth-century New World. A culmination of these myriad factors that wrought Puritanical...

We can never fully trust our understanding of historical events. Past events are often reinterpreted, reconstructed and dramatised as the years pass. The Salem Witch Trials are a textbook example of this kind of historic, cultural and political manipulation. The trials took place in 1692...

Imagine being labeled a “witch” without there being any evidence whatsoever. There is no one who can be trusted because there are supposed “witches” everywhere. Even family members could be a “witch.” There are people being hung just because some person points a finger at...

Gavin Mills once said, “If there were ever such a thing as a unique opinion, history would probably be less inclined to repeat itself.” Centuries, or even millenniums, before most of the world’s current population were even thought of being conceived, it was-and in fact,...