Research Paper on Hysteria

Research Paper

- What is McCarthyism?

The period of McCarthyism, named after a republican senator Joseph R. McCarthy, is said to have begun well before McCarthyЎЇs own involvement. During this period, which lasted from the 1940s to the 1950s, Senator McCarthy, who strongly opposed communism, claimed to have a list of the names of the communists in America. Though it was later found that this was a fraud, it certainly arose fears of communism in the minds of the Americans. Events of the 1940s and 1950s served to increase this sense of threat. In 1949, not only did ChinaЎЇs communist army gain control of Mainland China, but there was also an explosion of atomic bomb of the Soviet Union.

- What is mass hysteria? Find examples in history.

In the dictionary, the term mass hysteria is defined as a condition in which a large group of people exhibits similar physical or emotional symptoms, such as anxiety or extreme excitement. It is said that it may begin when a group witnesses an individual becoming hysterical during an extremely stressful event. Some of the major mass hysterias of history would include the Japanese internment camps, and the Salem Witch Trials. For example, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor started the AmericansЎЇ hysteria of the Japanese people. Those Japanese people, who had nothing to do with the attack itself (other than the mere fact that the attackers and they were both Japanese), were accused of spying and put into internment camps throughout the country. These seclusions of the Japanese people from the rest of the people ensured them that they wouldnЎЇt have to worry about further attacks and disasters.

- Witchcraft Trials of 1692.

Salem Witchcraft Trials were one of the earliest witchcraft trials in America. It all started in the city of Salem, when Reverend ParisЎЇs slave Tituba was left alone with his children. Tituba told the children the story of black magic that she had heard from her home of the Barbados. The slave, at one point, showed the girls magic, in which she would gaze in the egg white and see images. Fascinated by this, the girls told their friends to join them in the meetings with Tituba. Then the girls began to show strange behaviors. One of the ReverendЎЇs children, Betty, and her cousin, Abigail would flap their