“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.
She elaborated on this a bit during a recent interview with Bill Moyers:
https://billmoyers.com/story/podcast-bill-moyers-talks-with-dr-bandy-lee-about-the-dangerous-case-of-donald-trump/
BILL MOYERS: How do you get elected president of the United States if you have an antisocial personality disorder?
BANDY LEE: So, the adulation of crowds is something he welcomes and desires, but not an intimate relationship. You may have noticed that he has not even a single close friend. And eventually, everyone falls short of his expectations. And he goes through this cycle of idealizing people and then devaluing them and discarding them. So that’s a very typical cycle of these personalities. In addition to narcissistic symbiosis, I describe a phenomenon called shared psychosis, which used to be called folie à deux. You may be familiar with that, folie à deux, folie à trois, quatre– folie à million, so madness by the millions when it happens in a population. And it’s the phenomenon where if you have an influential figure with severe symptoms, the symptoms actually spread to healthy individuals. It’s quite a dramatic occurrence that I have had the occasion to see multiple times in the public sector, as well as the prison setting, it is quite common. And it most often happens in a family, where you have a severely ill person who has gone untreated who is a dominant person in the in the family. And it’s not the healthy people who get the sick person better. If you simply leave them alone, it’s the healthy individuals who eventually are almost bulldozed over with the symptoms, and then carry on the most bizarre delusions, and look like they have the exact same disorder that the primary individual has. But if you can distinguish who has the primary illness and separate them, usually hospitalize them, then the other family members return to normal. Now, I’ve seen this occur also in gangs and I believe that is what I am seeing with the nation.
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