A random thought...

[Crumpets]

Last year, I wrote my thesis on Belarus's post-Soviet experience and the construction of a new Belarusian identity under the traumatic circumstances of the Soviet collapse. One of the most illuminating things I learned when writing it is the notion of "collective" psychology - the notion that large groups have similar psychological responses to major events as individuals do to personal events, and can react collectively in the same manor.

For example, whole nations in post-war environments can be described as having "collective" PTSD, repressing traumatic memories from public discussion, increased rates of domestic violence and suicide, repeating certain phrases or images pertaining to the traumatic event - even decades or generations after the event has passed, so that the people exhibiting these symptoms were never subject to the original stimulus. This is all well-documented and increasingly non-controversial among those who study such things. And it's not just PTSD. There have been studies of collective amnesia, collective eating disorders, collective OCD, and plenty of others.

Some of these diseases are different though, as they are something one can be born with (i.e. OCD) or something that is more controlled (i.e. Korsakoff's syndrome brought about by excessive drinking). What I have never heard of, however, is a "mass" diagnosis of a psychological condition brought about by brain damage or a tumor, such as agnosia or even epilepsy.

So, I was thinking, might it be possible to have a mass-psychological response that mirrors the effects of physical brain damage, that is to say, something which cannot effect an entire population simultaneously in the way that a psychological trigger like war can? Are there any examples of, maybe, "mass agnosia" or "mass aphasia" or "mass hemispacial neglect"?

And while I have some background in psychology, I know next to nothing about neuroscience. So if this is a ridiculous question, I apologize.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Wonderful question (and your field of study is, of course, admirable). Sadly, I have no answers.

[Meclazine for Israel]

I think you answered your own question.

The outside world provides physical stimuli such as light, sound, smell and feel.

And as you noted, the Belarusians underwent terrible hardship. If i am not mistaken, that is where there was a school hostage crisis about 10 years ago. Beslan or something.

Those physical stimuli do produce a response in the brain. More often than not, that stimuli is overloaded.

And together, multiple people will have the same psychological response.

[Waterfall]

Interesting question, and worth asking.

But the underlying theory sounds hand-wavy to me. Social phenomena might remind us of individual phenomena, but I'd need to see a lot of data from sound, well-conceived experiments to be convinced the two types of phenomena work from the same mechanisms.