The AI Algorithm & Mass Hysteria and the impact on the Workplace

Easter Sunday 5 April 2026. It has been nearly a year since I wrote my last blog. The operative word is 'hiatus', a pause or break in continuity in the #JungianBitsOfInformation blog series. My creative thinking and writing just stopped all of a sudden. The hiatus has felt like a short pause in which nothing happened or was said, or a space where something was missing. Naturally, I'm examining my hiatus with all the Jungia psychoanalytic reflection that I can muster. While it is taking some time to come back to my love for writing, I have noticed that my vision for #JungianBitsOfInformation has changed.

#JungianBitsOfInformation was an idea which developed during my master’s degree studies at the University of Essex's Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies (PPS). Recently, I've began to contemplate doing a PhD at Essex to research artificial intelligence (AI) from an analytical psychology or Jungian psychological perspective. I'm still thinking about my research question but I'm certain it will hover around conscious and unconscious dynamics between people in the workplace and the AI algorithm. I'm thinking long and hard about my research question but not quite coming up with a specific topic other than AI from a Jungian psychosocial and psychoanalytic perspective. I appreciate this is a broad area that I need to narrow down to a question that focuses on AI and the workplace, a psychosocial and psychoanalytic lens, and of course, the unconscious.

Then on Saturday 28 March, the news that the police had responded to antisocial behaviour in Clapham was making headlines. The unrest peaked my interest. About 100 police officers were called to Clapham High Street where young, mostly black, people were reported to be gathering in large numbers, attempting to enter shops and restaurants. Social media channels like Tik Tok and Snapchat were full of videos of the sudden disorder. The disorder is a recent phenomenon fuelled by social media, AI algorithms and content creation in which teenagers and young people ‘link-up’ in large gatherings during the school holidays. There is a criminal element to the gatherings e.g. shoplifting, setting of fire works and generally aggressive anti social behaviour. As a result, businesses in the vicinity of these large gatherings are forced to close.

Marks and Spencer’s Retail director Thinus Keeve has demanded action from the London Mayor and Metropolitan Police after groups of young people wreaked havoc in Marks and Spencer's Clapham store. He also warned crime is getting 'more brazen, more organised and more aggressive' after a week plagued by antisocial disorder. London is certainly afflicted with shoplifting crime. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) Crime in England and Wales: year ending September 2025 indicate that shoplifting offences increased by 5% (to 519,381 offences) compared with the previous year (492,660 offences).

However, what happened in Clapham is different. There is some shoplifting but it is not the point of the gathering. Instead, there seems to be a new purpose - film yourself engaging in a public display of disorder, to be uploaded to your personal social media account in real time. Rather than damaging property and stealing goods, the point is to participate in a mass public disorder for content creation, fuelled by AI algorithms and promoted on social media channels such as Tik Tok. But what is motivating these young people to participate in such behaviour?

The social disorder is obviously problematic for businesses, small and large, which bear the brunt of the disorderly behaviour. The public's reaction to the behaviour is understandable. And it is concerning to the black community that the disorder raises complex questions about crime and race. However, I think it is important to understand the root cause of the phenomenon. I’m particularly struck that the behaviour originates in social media algorithms and that there is a large gathering of people. It seems to suggest some form of mass hysteria. I often wonder whether hysteria is affecting young black people in UK cities but in a much deadlier form e.g. knife crime, stabbings and in some cases like Clapham, antisocial disorder. These are important issues to examine, not just criminally, but psychologically. Psychology helps us understand human behaviour.

Mass Hysteria refers to an outbreak of unusual and uncharacteristic behaviours, thoughts and feelings, or health symptoms shared among a group of people.

People affected by Mass Hysteria:

• typically believe something specific has triggered their symptoms

• don’t have an underlying health condition that could prompt those symptoms

• wouldn’t behave in that way on a regular basis

• may share an extreme fear of an exaggerated or non-existent threat

If you are familiar with the Salem Witch Trials in Salem, Massachusetts, you will be familiar with the term. There are plenty of historical and contemporary examples of Mass Hysteria. The phenomenon still happens in the present day, fuelled partly by the internet and social media.

The term “hysteria” once applied to a wide variety of mental and physical health symptoms experienced by women in the late 18^th and early 19^th century. This broad 'diagnosis' was sometimes used as a reason to hospitalise women with no actual health concerns, often without their consent, in facilities where they faced harsh treatment. The third edition of the ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III),’ published in 1980, removed hysteria as a diagnosis, and mental health professionals no longer use this term. It was replaced by functional neurological disorder.

Hysteria was replaced in the DSM by more specific, descriptive diagnoses, primarily Conversion Disorder (or Functional Neurologic Symptom Disorder) for physical symptoms, and Dissociative Disorders for mental symptoms. In DSM-5, this is now often referred to as F2unctional Neurologic Disorder (FND).

Major Replacements in DSM History:

• Conversion Disorder/Functional Neurologic Symptom Disorder: Covers neurological symptoms (e.g., paralysis, blindness, seizures) with no identifiable organic cause.

• Dissociative Disorders: Covers symptoms like amnesia or fugue, previously part of 'dissociative hysteria'.

• Somatization Disorder (now Somatic Symptom Disorder): Covers chronic physical complaints.

• Histrionic Personality Disorder: Derived from the personality aspects of the old hysteria concept.

The changes were made to remove the sexist connotations of 'hysteria' and to provide better, evidence-based diagnostic criteria.

The term ‘Mass Hysteria’ is still used to describe a rapid spread of panic and fear. But the actual definition is a bit more complex. Psychologists mostly consider mass hysteria as a type of Conversion Disorder, or mental health condition that involves physical symptoms prompted by emotional or mental tension. In terms of sociology, it falls into the category of collective behaviour, or the mostly spontaneous actions of a large group of people who influence each other.

There are two types of mass hysteria:

• Mass anxiety hysteria - tends to show up among people who belong to the same close, often isolated, group or community. It involves sudden tension and other symptoms of anxiety, which ‘spread’ and resolve fairly quickly.

  
  

• Mass motor hysteria - tends to show up among people experiencing long-term stress and tension. It involves irregular motor (movement) symptoms that move from person to person gradually and often linger for weeks.

Mass hysteria usually spreads verbally and visually. So, people who see or hear about someone with symptoms often begin experiencing symptoms themselves.

From a Jungian perspective - mass hysteria is known as mass psychogenic illness (MPI), defined as a social phenomenon, consisting of collective anxiety due to a perceived threat and culminates in a cascade of symptoms suggestive of organic disease without an identifiable cause. The definition suggests that there is an underlying cause in the unconscious.

Mass psychogenic illness dates back through the centuries and has affected people from all cultures and regions of the world. It is typically seen as a prolonged build-up of psychological tension within a community which then manifests itself in dissociative states, conversion symptoms and other psychomotor abnormalities. These can persist for weeks or months.

In the Clapham phenomena there might be a case of mass hysteria: dramatic loss of self-control, individuals who are not fully conscious, the behaviour is wild and frenzied, and dissociative from collective social norms. And given that there is a well-established link between psychological stress and dissociation, this correlation suggests mass psychogenic illness which in turn has a detrimental effect on businesses.

Coming up in the next #JungianBitsOfInformation blog, I will explore the Clapham social disorder from my hypothesis that it is suggestive of mass psychogenic illness, fuelled by AI algorithms resulting in adverse impact on businesses i.e. businesses in the vicinity of the disorder are forced to close and the behaviour raises fear and anxiety in the business' workplace.

Mass psychogenic illness (MPI) remains a part of the human condition. It is not so unusual or unique. Here are some examples of MPI past and present.  

The Dancing Plague (1518): In Strasbourg, hundreds of people uncontrollably danced for days, with some dying from exhaustion or heart attacks.

Eejanaika (1867-68): Amidst social instability in Japan, large crowds partied, acted lawlessly, and danced in the streets, believing the world was ending.

Tanganyika laughter epidemic (1962): began on January 30, 1962, at a mission-run boarding school for girls in Kashasha, Tanzania. The laughter started with three girls and spread haphazardly throughout the school, affecting 95 of the 159 pupils, aged 12 to 18. Symptoms lasted from a few hours to 16 days in those affected. The teaching staff were not affected but reported that students were unable to concentrate on their lessons. The school was forced to close down on March 18, 1962. After the school was closed and the students were sent home, the epidemic spread to Nshamba, a village that was home to several of the girls. In April and May, 217 people had laughing attacks in the village, most of them school children and young adults. The Kashasha school was reopened on May 21, only to be closed again at the end of June. In June, the laughing epidemic spread to Ramashenye girls' middle school, near Bukoba, affecting 48 girls. Another outbreak occurred in Kanyangereka and two nearby boys schools were closed.

Tetanus Vaccine Hysteria (1998): Over 100 students in Jordan were hospitalized with, what was believed to be, adverse reactions to vaccines, which were determined to be psychosomatic.

Havana Syndrome (2016–2023): U.S. government officials reported unexplained symptoms like ringing in the ears and cognitive dysfunction. While initially blamed on foreign "sonic attacks," a 2023 intelligence review concluded a foreign adversary's involvement was highly unlikely, suggesting psychogenic factors may have played a role.

Salem Witch Trials (1692–1693): One of the most infamous cases in Salem Village, Massachusetts. It began when several young girls exhibited bizarre fits, leading to accusations of witchcraft that resulted in the execution of 20 people.