Suddenly, however, Malone feels qualified to express his expertise about “mass formation psychosis.” He knows so little about the field, he basically invented a term (or repeated something he heard once somewhere), instead of using the already well-known and accepted terms, mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness. None of his work touched upon psychology or psychological theory. He was trained as a medical doctor and spent much of his career as a medical researcher, as far as I can tell. Malone exhibits all the traits of an individual with only a rudimentary understanding of psychology and psychological theory. And while anxiety is indeed a significant issue for many people, it doesn’t “float” from person to person or otherwise become infectious. People just can’t be hypnotized without their knowledge or consent - that’s not at all how hypnosis works. Anyone who suggests there’s “free-floating anxiety” that’s “just like hypnosis” has a very limited understanding of what these things mean. Instead, his description sounds like some sort of pop psychology mumbo-jumbo from someone who took Psychology 101 in college. Malone isn’t a psychologist and doesn’t have any background or experience in psychology, human behavior, or psychiatric research. If this doesn’t sound particularly scientific or based in psychological science, you’d be right. “When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other and has free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don’t make sense, we can’t understand it, and then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere.” “The answer is mass formation psychosis.” On the podcast, Malone said, “What the heck happened to Germany in the 20s and 30s? Very intelligent, highly educated population, and they went barking mad. What Did Malone Say About Mass Formation Psychosis? These are the terms that have some research basis. Putting these two together and we get what is more commonly referred to as mass psychogenic illness (MPI) or, in pop psychology terms, mass hysteria or mass delusion. Most people don’t experience psychosis (or anything like it) in their lifetime. Psychosis is extremely rare, experienced usually by people with schizophrenia. Psychosis is when a person’s thoughts or how they perceive the world are abnormal in so much as the person may have difficulty understanding what is real and what is not. Mass formation isn’t a term typically used in psychology or sociology today. Much like “mob psychology,” a pop psychology term to describe the behavior of crowds in specific, limited-time environments. “Mass formation” suggests it is a large-scale event. That suggests that Malone was using a phrase that isn’t typically used by scientists, or at least it isn’t very well-researched. It is very surprising to find zero search results for any scientific term in these research databases.
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