R E Bartholomew
Biographic Data
| ID | 2620 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R E Bartholomew |
| GIVEN NAMES | R E |
| FAMILY NAME | Bartholomew |
| SIGNATURE | BARTHOLOMEW R E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Flinders University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0657-0920 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
“Havana Syndrome”
BACKGROUND: Since 2016, an array of claims and public discourse have circulated in the medical community over the origin and nature of a mysterious condition dubbed "Havana Syndrome," so named as it was first identified in Cuba. In March 2023, the United States intelligence community concluded that the condition was a socially constructed catch-all category for an array of health conditions and stress reactions that were lumped under a single lab…
Chasing ghosts in Cuba
A Social-Psychological Theory of Collective Anxiety Attacks
This article presents a social-psychological theory to explain collective behavior involving unusual somatic reactions. The authors term this social phenomenon a “collective anxiety attack,” to distinguish it from the psychiatric label of “mass psychogenic illness.” First, the article contrasts fundamental assumptions of a psychiatric-medical interpretation with a social-psychological interpretation. Next, the article illustrates the difference u…
The Great New England Airship Hoax of 1909
Occupational Mass Psychogenic Illness
Reports of occupational mass psychogenic illness (OMPI) in the scientific literature were examined to describe underlying presentation patterns and explain their sporadic appearance in the literature. Three distinct patterns were identified: (i) mass anxiety hysteria is precipitated by the sudden appearance of an anxiety-generating stimulus following the redefinition of an innocuous or imaginary odour or agent that is perceived as an immediate th…
The Conspicuous Absence of a Single Credible Case of Latah-Related Death or Serious Injury
Religious Devoutness Construed as Pathology
Contemporary Eurocentric norms and values continue to be superimposed onto various deviant religious convictions and expressions occurring both transculturally and transhistorically. Value judgments as to what constitutes acceptable forms of emotional expression and worship are often made under the insidious neutral guise of science, which is dominated by narrow, restrictive Western concepts of normality. Western-trained social scientists must be…
Dancing with Myths
The European ‘dancing manias’ represent the first recorded episodes of ‘epidemic hysteria’. These behaviours are typified within the psychiatric literature as spontaneous, stress-induced outbursts of psychological disturbance that primarily affected females. This depiction is typically founded on secondary sources or the selective use of period quotations by medical historians George Rosen and Henry Sigerist. However, based on a series of transla…
The Medicalization of Exotic Deviance
The premise of this article holds that the typification of individual koro as a medical syndrome has been inappropriately applied to collective episodes, and that based on an examination of their characteristic features koro epidemics should be reclassified as a sociological phenomenon involving mass social delusions. There is neither consistent nor compelling evidence to indicate that participants of collective episodes are psychologically distu…
The medicalization of the exotic
Latah is typified as an involuntary culture‐bound syndrome that is almost exclusively confined to Malayo‐Indonesian cultures, involving exaggerated responses to startle. Severe cases typically respond with verbal insults, obscenities, mimicking the words and actions of others, and “automatic obedience,” with reports of serious injury or death to bystanders. All known legal and historical accounts of Malayo‐lndonesian latah are reviewed. There is …
The Social Psychology of 'Epidemic' Koro
The few isolated reports of individual koro exhibit a symptomatology indicative of major psychiatric conditions (ie. psychosis or affective disorder), and appear unrelated to collective episodes which involve social, cultural, cognitive and physiological factors in the diffusion of koro-related beliefs. Yet, koro 'epidemics' continue to be viewed as exemplifying mass psychopathology or irrationality. An examination of the similarities between kor…
Whose Ethics
Mutilation Mania—The Witch Craze Revisited
Linda Moulton Howe. An Alien Harvest. Littleton, Colorado: LMH Productions. 1989. Pp. xviii. 455. $55.00. Cloth. ISBN 0‐9620570‐1‐0. Available from Linda Howe Productions, 904 Summit North Drive, Atlanta, Georgia 30324
The Quest for Transcendence
Two case studies involving waves of claims and public discourse about mysterious aerial sightings in the United States over half a century apart are presented. Most evaluations of such episodes by scientists ethnocentrically portray sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) as the product of deviance, irrationality, or psychopathology The emphasis on natural science approaches to understanding the social sciences is primarily responsible fo…
Evaluating Bigfoot Videos as an Anthropology Teaching Aid
Ethnocentricity and the social construction of ‘mass hysteria’
The South African Monoplane Hysteria
An outbreak of monoplane sightings within British South Africa during 1914 is examined as a case of mass hysteria. The incident is used to evaluate the utility of Smelser's category of the negative or hostile hysterical belief manifestation within Smelser's value-added theory of collective behavior, namely: structural conduciveness, structural strain, growth and spread of a generalized belief, mobilization of participants for action, and inadequa…
The Medicalization of Exotic Deviance
The premise of this article holds that the typification of individual koro as a medical syndrome has been inappropriately applied to collective episodes, and that based on an examination of their characteristic features koro epidemics should be reclassified as a sociological phenomenon involving mass social delusions. There is neither consistent nor compelling evidence to indicate that participants of collective episodes are psychologically distu…
The Quest for Transcendence
Two case studies involving waves of claims and public discourse about mysterious aerial sightings in the United States over half a century apart are presented. Most evaluations of such episodes by scientists ethnocentrically portray sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) as the product of deviance, irrationality, or psychopathology The emphasis on natural science approaches to understanding the social sciences is primarily responsible fo…
A Social-Psychological Theory of Collective Anxiety Attacks
This article presents a social-psychological theory to explain collective behavior involving unusual somatic reactions. The authors term this social phenomenon a “collective anxiety attack,” to distinguish it from the psychiatric label of “mass psychogenic illness.” First, the article contrasts fundamental assumptions of a psychiatric-medical interpretation with a social-psychological interpretation. Next, the article illustrates the difference u…
Occupational Mass Psychogenic Illness
Reports of occupational mass psychogenic illness (OMPI) in the scientific literature were examined to describe underlying presentation patterns and explain their sporadic appearance in the literature. Three distinct patterns were identified: (i) mass anxiety hysteria is precipitated by the sudden appearance of an anxiety-generating stimulus following the redefinition of an innocuous or imaginary odour or agent that is perceived as an immediate th…
The medicalization of the exotic
Latah is typified as an involuntary culture‐bound syndrome that is almost exclusively confined to Malayo‐Indonesian cultures, involving exaggerated responses to startle. Severe cases typically respond with verbal insults, obscenities, mimicking the words and actions of others, and “automatic obedience,” with reports of serious injury or death to bystanders. All known legal and historical accounts of Malayo‐lndonesian latah are reviewed. There is …
The South African Monoplane Hysteria
An outbreak of monoplane sightings within British South Africa during 1914 is examined as a case of mass hysteria. The incident is used to evaluate the utility of Smelser's category of the negative or hostile hysterical belief manifestation within Smelser's value-added theory of collective behavior, namely: structural conduciveness, structural strain, growth and spread of a generalized belief, mobilization of participants for action, and inadequa…
The Conspicuous Absence of a Single Credible Case of Latah-Related Death or Serious Injury
Religious Devoutness Construed as Pathology
Contemporary Eurocentric norms and values continue to be superimposed onto various deviant religious convictions and expressions occurring both transculturally and transhistorically. Value judgments as to what constitutes acceptable forms of emotional expression and worship are often made under the insidious neutral guise of science, which is dominated by narrow, restrictive Western concepts of normality. Western-trained social scientists must be…
Evaluating Bigfoot Videos as an Anthropology Teaching Aid
The South African Monoplane Hysteria
An outbreak of monoplane sightings within British South Africa during 1914 is examined as a case of mass hysteria. The incident is used to evaluate the utility of Smelser's category of the negative or hostile hysterical belief manifestation within Smelser's value-added theory of collective behavior, namely: structural conduciveness, structural strain, growth and spread of a generalized belief, mobilization of participants for action, and inadequa…
Ethnocentricity and the social construction of ‘mass hysteria’
The Quest for Transcendence
Two case studies involving waves of claims and public discourse about mysterious aerial sightings in the United States over half a century apart are presented. Most evaluations of such episodes by scientists ethnocentrically portray sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) as the product of deviance, irrationality, or psychopathology The emphasis on natural science approaches to understanding the social sciences is primarily responsible fo…
Evaluating Bigfoot Videos as an Anthropology Teaching Aid
Mutilation Mania—The Witch Craze Revisited
Linda Moulton Howe. An Alien Harvest. Littleton, Colorado: LMH Productions. 1989. Pp. xviii. 455. $55.00. Cloth. ISBN 0‐9620570‐1‐0. Available from Linda Howe Productions, 904 Summit North Drive, Atlanta, Georgia 30324
Whose Ethics
The Social Psychology of 'Epidemic' Koro
The few isolated reports of individual koro exhibit a symptomatology indicative of major psychiatric conditions (ie. psychosis or affective disorder), and appear unrelated to collective episodes which involve social, cultural, cognitive and physiological factors in the diffusion of koro-related beliefs. Yet, koro 'epidemics' continue to be viewed as exemplifying mass psychopathology or irrationality. An examination of the similarities between kor…
The medicalization of the exotic
Latah is typified as an involuntary culture‐bound syndrome that is almost exclusively confined to Malayo‐Indonesian cultures, involving exaggerated responses to startle. Severe cases typically respond with verbal insults, obscenities, mimicking the words and actions of others, and “automatic obedience,” with reports of serious injury or death to bystanders. All known legal and historical accounts of Malayo‐lndonesian latah are reviewed. There is …
Religious Devoutness Construed as Pathology
Contemporary Eurocentric norms and values continue to be superimposed onto various deviant religious convictions and expressions occurring both transculturally and transhistorically. Value judgments as to what constitutes acceptable forms of emotional expression and worship are often made under the insidious neutral guise of science, which is dominated by narrow, restrictive Western concepts of normality. Western-trained social scientists must be…
Dancing with Myths
The European ‘dancing manias’ represent the first recorded episodes of ‘epidemic hysteria’. These behaviours are typified within the psychiatric literature as spontaneous, stress-induced outbursts of psychological disturbance that primarily affected females. This depiction is typically founded on secondary sources or the selective use of period quotations by medical historians George Rosen and Henry Sigerist. However, based on a series of transla…
The Medicalization of Exotic Deviance
The premise of this article holds that the typification of individual koro as a medical syndrome has been inappropriately applied to collective episodes, and that based on an examination of their characteristic features koro epidemics should be reclassified as a sociological phenomenon involving mass social delusions. There is neither consistent nor compelling evidence to indicate that participants of collective episodes are psychologically distu…
The Conspicuous Absence of a Single Credible Case of Latah-Related Death or Serious Injury
Occupational Mass Psychogenic Illness
Reports of occupational mass psychogenic illness (OMPI) in the scientific literature were examined to describe underlying presentation patterns and explain their sporadic appearance in the literature. Three distinct patterns were identified: (i) mass anxiety hysteria is precipitated by the sudden appearance of an anxiety-generating stimulus following the redefinition of an innocuous or imaginary odour or agent that is perceived as an immediate th…
The Great New England Airship Hoax of 1909
A Social-Psychological Theory of Collective Anxiety Attacks
This article presents a social-psychological theory to explain collective behavior involving unusual somatic reactions. The authors term this social phenomenon a “collective anxiety attack,” to distinguish it from the psychiatric label of “mass psychogenic illness.” First, the article contrasts fundamental assumptions of a psychiatric-medical interpretation with a social-psychological interpretation. Next, the article illustrates the difference u…
Chasing ghosts in Cuba
“Havana Syndrome”
BACKGROUND: Since 2016, an array of claims and public discourse have circulated in the medical community over the origin and nature of a mysterious condition dubbed "Havana Syndrome," so named as it was first identified in Cuba. In March 2023, the United States intelligence community concluded that the condition was a socially constructed catch-all category for an array of health conditions and stress reactions that were lumped under a single lab…
Psychology (13 works) · Psychiatry (9 works) · History (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Medicine (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Psychoanalysis (5 works) · History (4 works)