# Sure, its all "mass hysteria"! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [October 10, 2003, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sure-its-all-mass-hysteria/206699 "2003-10-10T17:01:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![madrok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/94ad74/32.png) [@madrok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madrok)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sure-its-all-mass-hysteria/206699/1 "2003-10-10T17:01:25Z")
The big hullabaloo about “mass hysteria” is a great overblown case of…mass hysteria! I don’t see people getting hysterical, do you? Its used as a cover for all sorts of nasty goings-on (e.g. child abuse, cult worship) and is an easy journalistic fall-back. Most thinking people I know would say that we live in a place and time of great apathy and passivity, not passion and hysteria. Read “Psychic Dictatorship in the USA” by John Constantine for the real story behind the “mass hysteria” epidemic of the 1980s and how it was used to defend pedophiles in a handful of horrible child sexual cult abuse cases. Now, multiple personality disorder, or dissociative disorder may have been over-diagnosed, as are many disorders, but to say that it doesn’t exist is a bit much. What else is going on when a schizophrenic talks to himself?! Put 2 and 2 together. Or does schizophrenia not exist either? ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sure-its-all-mass-hysteria/206699/2 "2003-10-10T17:56:34Z")
[Does multiple personality disorder really exist?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/031003.html) Good evening and welcome to the SDMB, **madrok**. A link to the column is useful when posting about it. Two small points: 1. **Cecil** didn’t say the disorder doesn’t exist 2. Schizophrenia is not the same as “split personality”. There is another thread about this which seems pretty active: [Multiple Personality Disorder](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=215123). You might want to converse with those in that thread too. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2003, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sure-its-all-mass-hysteria/206699/3 "2003-10-12T15:42:31Z")
From the back cover of _Psychic Dictatorship in the USA_: > [@](#): > > Bombing minds rather than bodies is the warfare of the new millennium. Alex Constantine’s explosive book uncovers the terifying extent of electromagnetic and bioelemetric mind control experimentation on involuntary human subjects in America today. Funded under the euphemism of “Non-Lethal Technology”, the Pentagon has developed the ability to transmit voices, and inflict pain, madness, even death, with the push of a button. > > Psychiatrists observed long ago that people with “multiple personalities” behave as different personalities and completely fail to recall what the “other ones” were thinking and doing. Working with the government the psychiatrists desired to experiment with “live subjects” (i.e. human beings) to ascertain what the actual mechanics of the phenomena were. They wanted to “discover” how to purposely create multiple personalities, and to use such methods to create “perfect” spies and assassins who wouldn’t remember their orders, or what they knew and did. > > Using the excuse of “science” and “national security”, these psychiatrists experimented on babies and children to discover what type traumas (abuse, pshysical violence, and even murder of friends and parents) could shatter the personality and “make” mutliple personalities. They wanted to “figure it all out”, to “scientifically know”, and did everything and anything to expand their “understanding” of “multiple personality disorder”. This is only one example of an area of human abuse covered by the writer. The others are equally immoral and oppressive. Alex [not John] Constantine is also the author of _The Covert War Against Rock: What You Don’t Know About the Deaths of Jim Morrison, Tupac Shakur, Michael Hutchence, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Phil Ochs, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh_ and _Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in America_. And remember, only tinfoil hats are effective against transmitted voices. Don’t be fooled by claims that aluminum foil will work just as well. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2003, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sure-its-all-mass-hysteria/206699/4 "2003-10-12T19:03:24Z")
John Constantine is a character in DC and Vertigo comics. ---
**Author:** ![markci](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8491ac/32.png) [@markci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markci)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2003, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sure-its-all-mass-hysteria/206699/5 "2003-10-18T01:27:54Z")
\*\*\*\* I don’t see people getting hysterical, do you? Its used as a cover for all sorts of nasty goings-on (e.g. child abuse, cult worship) \*\*\*\* You seem to have it seriously backwards. Mass hysteria isn’t a cover for anything. It’s the _cause_ of a lot of false charges of ritual child abuse, communism, witchcraft, etc. ---
**Author:** ![markci](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8491ac/32.png) [@markci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markci)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2003, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sure-its-all-mass-hysteria/206699/6 "2003-10-18T01:31:04Z")
By the way, that Constantine guy is simply a nut. None of those “child abuse cults” ever existed. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2003, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sure-its-all-mass-hysteria/206699/7 "2003-11-05T05:40:59Z")
Look at the Pepsi scare in the 80s (or was it early 90s). One syringe was found in a Pepsi can and “suddenly” it was everywhere. Cans with syringes were just everywhere. They were all frauds. Hysteria isn’t necessarily getting freaked out. For instance it could be knowing the answers for a test (by studying) and getting so worked up you forget them. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2003, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sure-its-all-mass-hysteria/206699/8 "2003-11-05T11:41:52Z")
Has anybody ever diagnosed the “overuse” of “quotation marks” as a symptom of some “psychological disorder”? ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2003, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sure-its-all-mass-hysteria/206699/9 "2003-11-15T08:25:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Exapno Mapcase \* > \*\*From the back cover of _Psychic Dictatorship in the USA_: > > Working with the government the psychiatrists desired to experiment with “live subjects” (i.e. human beings) to ascertain what the actual mechanics of the phenomena were. They wanted to “discover” how to purposely create multiple personalities, and to use such methods to create “perfect” spies and assassins who wouldn’t remember their orders, or what they knew and did. > \*\* …the man may be a paranoid nutjob, but he’s just given me one _hell_ of an idea for a Sci-Fi/Spy thriller. ---
**Author:** ![MonkeyMensch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2003, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sure-its-all-mass-hysteria/206699/10 "2003-11-16T20:16:29Z")
::Harold Hill:: _Now one fine night they leave the pool hall Headin’ for the dance at the Armory Libertine men and scarlet women and ragtime Shameless music that’ll grab your son, your daughter into the arms of a jungle animal instinct- massteria!!_ ::/Harold Hill:: That’s what you were talking about, wasn’t it?