Jumping frenchmen of maine, missing words and my type of madness.
My approach to reading is similar to walking around without tying your shoelaces. You start off with a certain direction in mind but you’re never really sure where you may end up.
When you read you will often come across words you don’t understand.
Yesterday I came across a definition that didn’t have a word.
Here it is :
The misdiagnosis that an individual’s depression or mental illness, is derived from something wrong with them personally, when the depression an individual is experiencing may actually be induced by living in a society that is ill or broken. The said depression is actually a healthy response of a conscious, sentient, empathetic being responding to the greater societal illness surrounding them.
Now this definition sounds like my kind of madness.
It’s not me it’s everybody else.
I read the definition and my first thought was it’s a ‘latah’
I remembered this from an episode of Call my Bluff nearly thirty years ago. A word game on the BBC which involved a panel guessing whether the given meaning of a word was true or not.
Latah was one of those words.
It was first noticed in Malaysia. Suffers tend to involuntarily copy the actions of those around them. It is also characterized as a series of involuntary actions such as mimicking, hysterical laughter, profane language, dancing, and screaming
Similar to the jumping frenchmen of maine. A group of lumberjacks in Maine became know for jumping really high when startled.
So I tried to find a name for my condition.
I thought of iatrogenic disorders, those caused by a medical professional.
But this is of a disordered mind.
I thought of psychogenic pain.
Psychogenic pain is a pain disorder associated with psychological factors. Some types of mental or emotional problems can cause, increase or prolong pain.
I also remembered Munchausen by proxy. That fun psychological condition where a mother perhaps will cause an illness in her children.
So when an individual is diagnosed by a society that is ill we have to consider by proxy as part of our definition.
In this case it is society that is causing the problem.
A mass psychogenic disorder or mass hysteria is called socio-genic illness.
So,like munchausens by proxy, if we have a mass hysteria in society itself, that causes illness in an otherwise healthy individual, do we get sociogenic illness by proxy?
I finally had a name for my disease :-
Socio-genic disorder by proxy.
So I did what any sensible person would do.
I submitted it to the bureau of linguistic reality.
The bureau of linguistic reality is a participatory artwork with the aim of getting people to submit new words to describe their experiences .
Can you come up with a single word to fit the definition?
