Folie à deux is a complex psychological disorder in which one person takes part in another person's psychotic delusions. The first person is perfectly sane; it is only when he/she comes into contact with the second person that he/she begins to lose their grip on reality. If the two people are separated, the first person will once again return to a normal, sane state of mental health. Sometimes, if the two are kept apart, the second person will do a lot better psychologically than when they are together. This illness can also manifest in a group situation, such as a family, or close-knit group of people. Social isolation also plays a part in the transference of delusion from one individual to another.
Since madness is not a virus, the real question is how can it spread from one person to another? The answer to that question probably lies in the remarkable ability human beings have to adapt to new 'normals'. When people find themselves in an insane situation, or locked in close contact with an individual whose grasp of reality is completely different from the norm, they tend to automatically adjust their own perceptions and behavior in order to fit in, or cope with the situation. You see examples of this in every facet of life. A person who works for an unethical company will either have to become unethical themselves, or find a new job. A person trapped in a violent relationship will eventually make sense of the situation by developing a set of rationalizations that excuse the behavior of their partner, and so on... .
Any person who has had a close relationship with someone suffering from psychosis will be aware of just how strange a world the psychotic individual lives in. They will also be aware of the balancing act required in order to keep one foot in the 'real' world, while still participating in the psychotic individual's reality. You are, in effect, splitting your mind into two spheres. The less interaction that you have with the outside world, the more 'normal' the world of the psychotic becomes for you.
A person who is easily influenced by others, or lacks a strong self-identity, someone who is a 'follower' by nature is going to run into trouble in such a situation. The allure of psychotic delusions can be quite powerful when the person closest to you is in the grips of them. So long as your mind is still telling you 'this is all make-believe', you are still on sound ground. The moment that voice goes silent, or is replaced by one saying 'maybe it really is real', you are likely heading for a situation where delusions can become shared delusions. Once they become shared delusions, you are, in effect, feeding the psychotic individual's psychosis, and they are feeding yours.
Is this how mass delusions come about? Were the Salem witch trials, and Jonestown the result of 'folie à plusieurs'?
Psychotic delusions usually come in two sorts: religious/paranormal, and paranoid. Not all psychotic individuals will suffer from paranoia; some psychotics will suffer from seemingly benign 'visions' and delusions. In fact, the vast majority of those people afflicted with the illness live quiet lives, supported by friends and family. Only a few of them actually go out and do the things their voices and visions tell them to, and only a tiny minority of those become successful at it, garnering groups of devoted followers who seemingly share in their madness.
Prior to the era of mass communications, conditions were ideal for the outbreak of mass delusions in small, isolated communities. There are plenty of historical incidences where this has occurred. However, only on rare occasions did a charismatic individual break out beyond their immediate community, amass followers, and pose a direct challenge to the greater community. Joan of Arc comes to mind instantly.
Still, the damage caused by people in the grips of delusions sharing their madness with others was kept to a minimum due to simple lack of opportunity. In order to spread their delusions to others, they had to be in close, personal contact with people who were susceptible to their specific brand of madness. People searching for greater meaning in life would naturally gravitate towards people who claim to have received 'messages' from God, or other religious figures, while people with a preexisting bent towards paranoia would gravitate towards secret societies and other places advocating 'hidden' things.
With the advent of radio, television and mass publishing, the ability of the delusional to spread their 'messages' to a wider audience grew, but not all that greatly, since most media rested in the hands of people who were not susceptible to the 'message'. Only if there was money to be made would we get a situation such as the one portrayed in the movie 'Network'.
We also have to differentiate between people who have legitimately heard voices, or had 'visions', and those who only claim to have had them in order to lend legitimacy to their 'ministries', and to make a fortune while doing it. How many televangelists have really had the 'visions' they claim to, do you suppose? Claiming to have had a 'vision' is the same as saying 'God has anointed me as His prophet, so open your pocketbook to me'. It's money making and influence tactic, and nothing else.
However, it does make you wonder just how many televangelists, spiritual leaders, politicians, and pundits have been catapulted to success on the basis of some sort of mental delusion? Not all psychopaths have visions, you'll recall. The most insidious version of psychopathy is paranoid psychosis, and we need only look to politics and propaganda to see how quickly fear of this or that can embed itself in the population's imagination - particularly when a nation holds tightly to a specific image of itself. While we might think of Joseph Stalin as a the archetype of a paranoid leader imposing his paranoia on the populace, there are many less insidious seeming politicians and leaders who have done exactly the same thing to their voting public.
Enter the internet age, where the world has been effectively reduced to tight communities of 'followers'. Just as in the age before mass communications, we find ourselves once again living in an insular world where one person's madness can easily influence the thoughts and perceptions of others. To be honest, I have found quite a number of people on the internet claiming 'visions' from God, while talking about biblical prophecy and expounding specific political ideologies that are closely tied to dispensationalism. I sincerely doubt that the vast majority of these individuals are genuine, outside of their pseudo-religious political proselytizing. They have an agenda, and are manipulating the gullible in order to promote it. Sadly, among the gullible are probably more than a few individuals who suffer from psychosis or other psychological disorders, and whose very real delusions are being fed and sustained by the poison that these 'preachers' are pouring out.
The internet is proving to be a platform like no other for the congregating of susceptible individuals into communities dedicated to exactly the thing that they are susceptible to. I believe that this is a cause for major concern from a mental health perspective. Unlike the religious communities, many of the 'alternative' communities out there are being led by not by frauds, but by egomaniacs, paranoid delusionals, and/or people suffering from other tangible psychological problems. Entering one of their channels or chat rooms is like entering a small, stuffy bed-sit, and having a conversation with someone who is 100% convinced of the reality of his/her delusions. Reason cannot enter the conversation, and you are obliged to communicate with them only in their own terminology. It can be interesting for a while, but if you hang around too long, the atmosphere becomes stifling - at least for someone who is strongly grounded in the reality of the greater world. For the psychologically fragile, it is a trap waiting to be sprung.
Psychosis is a disease that strikes people with a genetic predisposition; it cannot be transmitted from person to person in the same way as the flu or HIV can. Stress and environment are factors in its onset, as are certain drugs, and the sad fact is, many people who are at a high risk for the disease tend to gravitate towards precisely the things that trigger it. Despite the fact that the disease itself cannot be passed from one person to another, history has shown that the ideas and the mentality that it breeds can be. If an entire nation can fall into the mass delusion inspired by its leader, smaller communities and individuals can certainly be misled in the same way.
I write this as a person who once had a dear friend (now deceased) that suffered from the disease. We had many a conversation, just him, me and Satan, in his stuffy little bedsit. I couldn't see Satan, but what the hell, if it made my friend happy, I'd go along with the conversation.
image: pixabay
