CHAPTER XI
PSYCHIC CONTAGION
The term psychic contagion is often thought of as merely figurative. It is, however, quite literal. Many minds are influenced by what they see happening round them and induced to imitate the activities of others. The term psychic contagion is so thoroughly descriptive of what happens that it deserves the place that it has secured.
Everywhere and at all times we find historical traces of psychic contagion compelling people to perform in crowds or groups the most curious and inexplicable and sometimes the most horrible things. Even in the old myths before the times of the Trojan War, we have the story of hysteria spreading among the daughters of King Proteus, so that the famous old physician, Pelampus, had to administer white hellebore in goat's milk in order to relieve them. It is probable that this rather heroic remedy with its definite effect upon the bowels produced such a revulsion of feeling as to cure the hysteria. Anyone who has read the awful tragedy that Euripides has written in the Bacchae will have had brought home to him a typical example of psychic contagion. The queen mother in the midst of one of the Bacchic orgies kills her own son in the frenzy that has come from the religious excitement exaggerated by the association of a number of women in the religious rites of the god Bacchus. It is well understood that this was not a case of drunkenness, but of psychic intoxication.
Phrygian Bacchantes are described as overcome from time to time by paroxysms of curious uncontrollable automatic movements with or without disturbance of consciousness. This represents the earliest form of what came to be known afterwards as St. Vitus Dance when it spread among a number of people. Such manifestations were not at all uncommon in the East in the earlier days and they have continued during all history. In Hindustan epidemics of automatic movements, evidently choreic in character, have been known for many centuries under the name of lapax. Outbreaks of this kind were common in the Middle Ages and Paracelsus has described them as happening early in the sixteenth century. At any time the occurrence of an hysterical seizure in a crowded hall, and especially in a schoolroom, will lead to other hysterical manifestations. A case of chorea will induce imitative movements in susceptible bystanders that may be quite uncontrollable. Tics of various kinds are readily picked up by children and special care must be exercised to prevent their spread. In general the state of mind is extremely important in all these conditions and they can be influenced favorably only through the mind.
Contagions Trifles.—Perhaps the extent to which psychic contagion influences us can be seen better in little things than anywhere else. Everyone knows how contagious yawning is. Again and again observations have been made while actors were yawning upon the stage. Nearly everyone in the theater begins to yawn in a few minutes and, in spite of the most determined [{689}] efforts, every now and then even the most serious-minded elderly gentleman in the audience finds himself unconsciously joining in. It seems foolish and to an onlooker appears almost prearranged. It is only necessary, however, to yawn a few times in a street car, especially at night, to have many imitators. Nearly the same thing is true of all respiratory phenomena. Sighing, for instance, is quite contagious. Coughing is often as much the result of imitation as anything else. At certain pauses in church services a preliminary cough is heard and then some scattering coughs here and there, like the musketry of scouts, and then a whole battery of coughs is let off, especially if it is in the winter time, because nearly everybody within hearing is tempted to cough. To talk about yawning or coughing or sighing before some people is almost sure to produce a tendency to these manifestations. These apparently trivial happenings help to explain many phenomena of human imitation in more serious things.
Most of the phenomena associated with expression are liable to be initiated as the result of imitation. Laughing, for instance, is particularly contagious among young folks and is especially likely to be insuppressible when they wish to be particularly solemn. At religious services it takes but little to make people laugh and giggle, no matter how much they may wish to be dignified and reverential. A few giggling girls will sometimes disturb a serious service. Extremes are particularly prone to meet in this matter and the sublime easily becomes the ridiculous. A titter will set off even the best intentioned of young folks in spite of resolutions to the contrary. Crying has something of the same contagious nature, though it is not quite so strong, but among women tears are particularly likely to evoke tears. The epidemic of curious manifestations of expression, usually of an hysterical nature, that we know by tradition to have spread in communities in the Middle Ages and much later, are only typical examples of this tendency for modes of expression to be contagious to an exaggerated degree.
Expectoration is largely dependent on imitation, sometimes conscious, of course, but often quite unconscious. In the recent crusade organized to prevent the spread of tuberculosis the question of expectoration as a diffusing agent of the bacilli has given a new importance to observations on this subject. It is recognized that we have "a spitting sex" and that men spit from force of habit, boys imitate them, while women and girls almost never spit. There is no reason in the world why when men and women are engaged in the same occupations there should be any difference in this regard between them, yet employers know how hard it is to keep corners and by-places in the rooms where men work free from expectoration, while no such difficulty is found where women work. We have a spitting sex because of psychic contagion, and in spite of the fact that there are serious dangers connected with the habit. What is true of spitting may also be true of other habits relating to the respiratory passages. Hawking and blowing the nose more frequently than is needed are spread by psychic contagion and certain habits in these matters that are injurious to the respiratory apparatus often require considerable effort to break.
Fads and Health.—Enlightened as we think ourselves, we have many more examples of psychic contagion in the present than we would perhaps care to admit, unless the facts were called to our special attention. [{690}] At a particular period in the modern time it becomes the fad to do things in a special way. We write alike, we build our houses after a common type. We take our recreation in a particular fashion. Bicycling comes in and goes out; roller skating attacks nearly every one of the young folks and then is abandoned. There are fashions in everything and fashions, after all, are recurring instances of psychic contagion. The mental influence spreads from one to another. It may be that a particular fashion, as in houses or in clothes, is especially ugly. That makes no difference. After a time taste revolts against it, but in the meantime the psychic contagion is enough to overturn the canons of taste. There are fashions in literature, or at least what is called literature. The nature novel comes and goes, then the novel of adventure has its place, then the detective novel, after a time the little-country prince or princess and their romance comes into fashion. After a time we realize that these are passing fancies, but in the meantime they have influenced many people.
Some of these fashions bring conditions that are deleterious to health. The moving-picture show in places that almost never have a stime of sunlight in them and are, in their way, quite as bad, especially for respiratory troubles, as the dust-laden atmosphere of the roller-skating rink, become the fad of the moment in spite of knowledge or ignorance of hygiene. Just now we are in the midst of a fad for fresh air, that, unfortunately, goes and comes with the centuries and we have no guarantee that people will not learn again to live in closely sealed houses. High heels come and go, as do corsets of various kinds, more or less injurious, in spite of the admonition of the physician. In fact, one of the most interesting studies in psychic contagion is the history of the fashions. A particular fashion, especially in its exaggerated forms, will probably look well on about one-fifth of the women at a given time. About four-fifths of them, however, adopt it in spite of the fact that on three-fifths it emphasizes certain qualities that it would be well to keep in the background. It is woman's principal desire to please, yet this is completely perverted by the psychic epidemic of fashion which causes people to follow after others quite as much as did the medieval people in various fads that attracted attention and have come down to us.
Our enlightenment, at least in as far as that word means general diffusion of the ability to read, has rather added to the power of psychic contagion. People accept ideas from others almost as unconsciously as they catch disease from those suffering from it. The psychology of advertising shows how easy it is to make people accept things just by insisting on them and by frequent repetitions of statements. The psychology of the proprietary medicine business in modern times is about as typical an example of psychic contagion induced deliberately as one could well imagine. Those who stop to reason do not fall victims. Most people, however, do not stop to reason. They have not the mental resistive vitality to render them immune to the influence of certain irrationalities and so literally hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on perfectly useless, oftentimes harmful drugs, which people had become persuaded through the psychic contagium of printer's ink were sure to do them good. The psychology of the mob has been studied somewhat in recent years and it shows how clear it is that men follow after one another in doing foolish things even more than in doing wise ones. Psychic contagion is a prominent factor in life, it always has been, is now, and evidently always [{691}] will be, and must be reckoned with by anyone who wishes to recognize the principles that underlie psychotherapy.