Fonda Is Weeping, Jong Is In Spasm
Pre-Election Psycho-Somatic Hysteria

by Phyllis Chesler
Pajamas Media
October 31, 2008

http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/368/fonda-is-weeping-jong-is-in-spasm-election

Excerpt:

I have gone on record as an author, a therapist, a professor, an expert courtroom witness–and an activist to document and oppose the ways in which false psychiatric diagnoses are used to stigmatize, even demonize people. But, I've never denied that mental illness exists. On the contrary. It is a formidable enemy and causes great human suffering.

Still, I am uncertain about how to describe certain political "crowd" behaviors that might be characterized as "mad," cult-like, hysterical. In the Wall Street Journal, Fouad Ajami, quotes Elias Cannetti's 1960 work about Crowds and Power. Cannetti believes that marching together gives people the "illusion of equality." But Ajami views American pro-Obama crowds as behaving more and more like crowds on the Arab Street, with huge emotionality and faith in a Great Leader. Ajami states that the "politics of charisma wrecked Arab and Muslim societies."

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