Almost every day, when I read the news, when I go on social media – and sometimes also when I look around me – I have the disturbing and stubborn feeling that a large part of the world has gone mad, literally.
In psychology, it has always been held that madness is not contagious. It is not influenza or chickenpox. And yet, in the 19th century, the psychiatrists Charles Lasègue and Jules Falret first referred to a shared mental disorder: la folie à deux.
Since then, cases of folie à trois (three people involved), folie à quatre (four people affected), folie en famille (also known as family insanity) and even folie à plusieurs (when the insanity affects several people) have been described.
Erich Fromm, in his book “The Heart of Man”, went a step further and spoke of folie à millions, a psychopathological phenomenon at a social level that occurs when large groups of people lose their bearings and contact with reality.
How does an entire society slide into folie à millions?
When a shared psychotic disorder occurs, it is common for there to be a dominant or “inducing” person who feeds a delusional belief during a psychotic episode. Due to living together, he or she ends up imposing his or her distorted reality on the other, the “induced” person, who assumes a secondary and passive role, so that he or she ends up suffering similar psychotic symptoms, also losing contact with reality.
One of the most characteristic symptoms of shared psychotic disorder is precisely delusions. Delusional ideas are false judgments that are held with great conviction, even though their content (generally fanciful and detached from reality) makes them objectively impossible. However, the person perceives them as evident and immutable truths, so they do not change their mind, not even in the face of contrary evidence, and they become even more immersed in this delusional world.
A similar phenomenon occurs in the folie à millions: millions of people distance themselves from reality and become increasingly immersed in a delusional narrative. This narrative is generally constructed and fed by a very symptomatic individual who occupies an influential position in society, as was the case with Hitler and Stalin, and unfortunately continues to occur with other leaders today.
Obviously, this leader only channels and amplifies many of the pathological tendencies that already existed in a part of the regressive society, such as paranoia, narcissism and propensity for violence. Then, the delusional narrative expands and continues its course through word of mouth, the media and social networks, reaching to impregnate a large part of society until creating a layer that hides reality.
“The very fact of consensus makes madness afflicted with prudence and fiction a reality,” Fromm explained. “The individual who participates in such common madness lacks the sense of complete isolation and separation, and consequently escapes the intense anguish he would experience in a progressive society.”
Feeling accompanied by so many people who share their delusional ideas, the person does not even question them. The group reinforces them, moving everyone further and further away from reality. In this way, the facts become debatable, the data loses validity and the evidence is ignored.
Fromm believed that folie à millions occurs when many people share regressive and archaic tendencies. That is, when they have failed to develop their potential as human beings, but have instead remained stuck in a state of frustration and narcissism. Unable to deal maturely with reality, they separate themselves from it and try to make the facts fit into their delusional narrative so that they do not have to go to the trouble of changing their forma mentis.
Reason, what reason?
“For most people, reason and reality are nothing more than public consensus,” Fromm warned. Therefore, “one never goes mad when no other individual’s thinking differs from one’s own.” That is, we have become accustomed to asking ourselves what others think, instead of questioning the relevance and logic of our actions, beliefs and decisions.
“We naively assume that the fact that most people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of those ideas and feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing on reason or mental health. Just as there is folie à deux, there is folie à millions.
“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make those vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make those people sane,” Fromm explained.
Fromm came to the disheartening conclusion that modern Western society is truly “mad” because not only has it separated itself from nature and thereby severed an important link with reality, but its focus on consumption turns people into automatons incapable of thinking and desiring on their own. This inability to self-actualize as human beings makes them vulnerable to the most delusional narratives, which are quick to come to light as soon as things begin to go wrong and uncertainty sets in.
The solution?
“Finding a new harmony by developing all the human forces within oneself,” Fromm recommended. In other words, taking a step back and rethinking everything. Stop following the herd and start developing your own thoughts. Start desiring for yourself, instead of chasing what the masses want. And develop the psychological resources necessary to embark on that path with determination.
When a society is made up of mature, conscious and self-actualized people, it is difficult for it to be manipulated by delusional narratives. But this change must occur person by person. I just hope it is not too late.
References:
Zuckerberg, A. et. Al. (2023) Folie À Trois: A Case of Shared Delusions Between a Patient, Her Sister, and Another Patient in the In-Patient Psychiatric Unit. Cureus; 15(8): e43304.
Kovacevic, S. I. et. Al. (2022) Shared psychotic disorder – a case study of folie à famille. Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci; 26(15):5362-5366.
Kelly, B. D. (2009) Folie a plusieurs: forensic cases from nineteenth-century Ireland. Hist Psychiatry; 20(77 Pt 1): 47-60.
Greener, M. (2007) Folie á deux: time to rethink ‘shared psychosis’? Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry; 11(9): 21-24.
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