The Infectious Mind: How Social Contagion Makes Us Ill
Autor Matilda Goslingen Limba Engleză Hardback – 28 ian 2027
The Infectious Mind is a gripping investigation into one of the strangest frontiers of human behaviour: how physical and psychological symptoms can spread socially - like viruses.
From the dancing plagues of medieval Europe to the Pokémon episode that hospitalised hundreds of children, social contagion has shaped collective health and hysteria for centuries and across continents. Today, platforms like TikTok and YouTube are driving a new wave - from functional tics to dissociative identities - with symptoms that mimic those of others and spread at startling speed.
Drawing on history, neurology, psychology and culture, social scientist Matilda Gosling shows how our brains and bodies absorb the emotional currents around us, and how distress finds new forms of expression in each era. Passing through medieval towns, Victorian sanatoriums, modern therapy rooms and the labyrinthine connections of social media, Gosling examines the pull of fear, suggestion and belonging through a vivid cast of spies, witches, influencers and quack practitioners.
THE INFECTIOUS MIND reveals why symptoms spread, why some become epidemics, and how we can protect ourselves in an age of mass connectedness.
Preț: 108.95 lei
Preț vechi: 144.53 lei
-25% Precomandă
Carte nepublicată încă
Specificații
ISBN-10: 1035924277
Pagini: 320
Ilustrații: n/a
Dimensiuni: 153 x 234 mm
Editura: Bloomsbury Publishing
Colecția Apollo
Locul publicării:London, United Kingdom
Descriere
From the dancing plagues of medieval Europe to the Pokémon episode that reportedly hospitalised several hundred, social contagion has shaped collective health and hysteria for centuries. Today, platforms like TikTok and YouTube are driving a new wave - from functional tics to dissociative identities - with symptoms that mimic those of others and spread at startling speed.
Drawing on history, neurology, psychology and culture, social scientist Matilda Gosling shows how our brains and bodies absorb the emotional currents around us, and how distress finds new forms of expression in each era. This is a book about why symptoms spread, why some become epidemics, and how we can protect ourselves in an age of mass connectedness.
Recenzii
Human distress is a universal constant, but the labels used to describe it are constantly changing as psychiatric fads and fashions come and go. The speed and reach of the internet have accelerated and widened the spread of harmful, socially contagious, psychiatric self-diagnosis. Those who do not know the weird history described in this terrific book may be doomed to repeat it. A fascinating topic that has never been more relevant.
In THE INFECTIOUS MIND, Matilda Gosling argues that we are living at a particularly vulnerable moment in history, as rapid social and technological changes - chief among them the rise of social media - has incubated a fresh surge of social contagions. It is a warning worth heeding, delivered with rare clarity on a topic that is often misunderstood. Gosling demonstrates a mastery of the literature as she moves across five centuries of case material . Her willingness to draw on her own experience with chronic pain gives this book an unusual candor, and her closing chapters on how we might slow or prevent these outbreaks are an important contribution to a field too often left to sensationalism
THE INFECTIOUS MIND is a rich and compelling analysis of socially transmitted illness. Symptoms like pain and anxiety and itching and convulsions can be spread - like viruses - by the human mind. If our minds can 'infect' us, can they not also 'cure' us? Matilda Gosling is hopeful. She makes the case magnificently in this gripping investigation
The mind is no less susceptible to epidemics than the body . History is riddled with epidemics of weird mind viruses, and Matilda Gosling documents them all in this fascinating yet disquieting book