btrmt. lectures

You Can Catch Madness

Listen Later

Two ordinary people suddenly go insane together. It’s a premise we enjoy from a safe distance—because surely it could never be us. I’m not so sure. Shared madness isn’t rare, it isn’t aberrant, and it sits a lot closer to ordinary love than we’d like to think. Strip away the spectacle and what’s left is the most common thing in the world: two lonely people who found a home in each other.

Show notes
Further reading
  • Folie à deux: the madness of two — the article that inspired this lecture.
  • Four models of psychopathology — how we decide what counts as “abnormal”, and why a benign shared delusion slips past all of it.
  • The loneliness epidemic and Explaining group dynamics — why social isolation is so dangerous for us.
  • It’s Not Social Media, Life Is Just Worse — a companion lecture on modern isolation.
  • Successful Prophets — the same connection mechanism scaled from the pair to the group.
    • References
    • Ursula and Sabina Eriksson (the Swedish sisters).
    • Folie à deux; Jules Baillarger, Charles Lasègue and Jean-Pierre Falret.
    • Shared psychotic disorder (the undiagnosis quote), and the intimacy-in-isolation qualification.
    • The Japanese family case (shared delusional hallucination); delusional parasitosis; shared pseudocyesis.
    • The Tromp family (BBC, Mamamia).
    • Theranos: Elizabeth Holmes, Sunny Balwani, and Bad Blood.
    • Group polarisation and risky shift.
    • Gang-stalking, Morgellons, and mass psychogenic illness.
      • ...more
      View all episodesView all episodes
      Download on the App Store
      btrmt. lecturesBy Dorian Minors