Anxious Projections: Mass Hysteria and the Problem of Interpretation.

Collective afflictions among teenage girls in Nepal, often labeled 'mass hysteria,' are reported in local and national newspapers as strange and mysterious events. Treatments range from shamanic rituals to psychosocial interventions, the latter gaining prominence with the rise of global mental health. The discourse around these cases reveals deep societal anxieties about moral community breakdown, the status of shamanic knowledge, and gender norms around emotional expression. Because the cause is ambiguous, symptoms are dramatically displayed, and the afflicted individuals themselves are absent as experiencing subjects, these cases become a blank screen onto which broader collective anxieties of a changing society are projected and debated.

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Abstract

Stories of "mass hysteria" among teenage girls have often graced the headlines of Nepal's local and national newspapers, creating a public spectacle of a strange and mysterious form of affliction. Treatments include both shamanic rituals and psychosocial interventions, a new therapeutic modality that has gained prominence over the past two decades following the rise of global mental health. This article shows how the discourse around the collective affliction of teenage girls reveals a number of anxieties at the heart of Nepali society regarding the moral rupture of community, the status of shamanic knowledge, and gender and the management of emotion. I argue that due to the ambiguity of cause, the dramatic public display of symptoms, and the absence of the experiencing subject of affliction, cases of "mass hysteria" offer a blank screen onto which the broader collective anxieties of a society in flux are projected and debated.