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Collective psychosis as a social phenomenon

Authors: Kavinova I.P. Published: 19.10.2018
Published in issue: #9(71)/2018  
DOI: 10.18698/2306-8477-2018-9-557  
Category: The Humanities in Technical University | Chapter: Philosophy Science  
Keywords: collective psychosis, heliotraxia, collective reflexology, A.L. Chizhevsky, V.M. Bekhterev, mass psychology, psycho-somatics, suggestion, auto-suggestion, mutual suggestion

The article considers collective psychosis as a special phenomenon of social life. An attempt is made to clarify the meaning of this term, introduced into the scientific literature by two outstanding scientists of the twentieth century — V.M. Bekhterev and A.L. Chizhevsky. The irreducibility of collective psychosis exclusively to induced psychosis is shown using the methods proposed by these scientists.  The following features collective psychosis, that are: a suggestion effect, which grows into self-suggestion, and later into mutual suggestion; the effect of infectiousness, or impulsive behavior in a crowd (even in the absence of the crowd itself), heliotraxia, i.e. the transition of large masses of people from a static to a dynamic state, prevailing public moods created under the influence of consciousness manipulation on the Internet and mass media are highlighted as well. Particular attention is paid in the article to the problem of psycho-physical parallelism (psycho-somatics), as well as the relevance of the study of the phenomenon of collective psychosis in the context of modern mass psychology


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