How To Get Rid Of Madness Elden Ring?

Madness Effects in Elden Ring – Targets afflicted with Madness lose FP and take damage.

Deals damage equal to 100+15% of the target’s max HP, and causes FP loss of 30+10% of their max FP. The Madness effect can be mitigated by raising your Focus stat. Focus can be improved by adding points into Mind,

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How do you cure madness?

Curing Madness – A calm emotions spell can suppress the Effects of madness, while a lesser restoration spell can rid a character of a short-term or long-term madness. Depending on the source of the madness, remove curse or dispel evil might also prove effective. A greater restoration spell or more powerful magic is required to rid a character of indefinite madness.
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What causes madness in Elden Ring?

Elden Ring players love to find new stat, weapon, and spell combinations that result in new character builds that often break the game. In fact, one of the open-world RPG’s newest meta fads lets users demolish player-controlled opponents with minimal effort thanks to the power of the “Madness” status effect.

• Madness is arguably one of the most debilitating debuffs in Elden Ring,
• When triggered, it takes a significant chunk out of a player’s health and FP, momentarily stuns them, and temporarily prevents them from casting any spells.
• Like every other status effect, Madness has to slowly fill a meter before it actually affects its victim, but players have discovered a deviously simple combination of stats and items that allows the Madness effect to proc instantly (or almost instantly).

Interestingly, if it weren’t for Patch 1.03, which fixed Arcane scaling and turned weapons like Rivers of Blood into overpowered nightmares, this build might never have been born. The “Madness build” revolves around the Frenzied Burst incantation (which drops from a Teardrop Scarab in Liurnia of the Lakes).

That spell requires 22 Faith to use, slowly generates Madness, and deals extra damage when charged up. Since Elden Ring ‘s Frenzied Flame Seal increases the damage of Frenzied Flame incantations, you might assume that item is crucial for getting the most out of Frenzied Burst. However, this particular build actually wants to maximize Madness buildup rather than raw damage.

That being the case, you’ll actually be using the Dragon Communion Seal (which lies in the Fringefolk Hero’s Grave and requires 10 Faith and Arcane to use). Even though that finger seal buffs Dragon Communion Incantations, it also increases the buildup of certain status effects like Madness.

Some players also recommend acquiring Vyke’s War Spear from Festering Fingerprint Vyke since that weapon is one of the few armaments in Elden Ring that inflicts Madness. However, the spear is ultimately more of a companion piece than a key component. You’re free to run other weapons if you’re inclined to do so.

Since Frenzied Burst and Dragon Communion Seal primarily scale with Faith and Arcane, anyone who wants to use the Madness build should focus on those stats. However, the exact stats required to dominate PvP depend on Dragon Communion Seal’s upgrade level and how far you’re willing to push things.

Some players recommend having at least 40 Faith with at least 40 Arcane and a +9 or +10 Dragon Communion Seal, while others say that 55 Arcane points and a +7 Dragon Communion Seal will do the job. The main point is that you want to keep upgrading your Dragon Communion Seal and acquire as many Arcane points as possible in order to increase the effectiveness of the Frenzied Burst incantation.

Of course, a few points in Dexterity and Mind for quicker casting and extra FP, respectively, also help. While less overall Faith means less damage per hit of Frenzied Burst, when properly kitted out, this build is capable of turning nearly every Frenzied Burst blast into a magic missile that instantly fills a PvP player’s Madness meter.

• That leaves victims open to another attack, which means anyone using Frenzied Burst can simply hit them again with the ability again and stunlock their victims into a quick grave.
• As this video demonstrates, it doesn’t take a lot to finish off opponents with this build and leave them feeling helpless all the while: The only reliable “defense” against this build is to have incredibly high Focus, which allows you to resist the Madness effect and is increased by funneling points into your Mind stat and equipping special items such as the Clarifying Horn Charm.

However, given the speed with which players can stack Madness thanks to this build, high Focus is less of a reliable counter and more of a temporary band-aid. Only time will tell if FromSoftware nerfs this build in the game’s next patch, but it certainly seems to be the bane of Elden Ring ‘s PvP scene at the moment.
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How do you stop the madness in frenzied flame village Elden Ring?

Frenzied Flame Village and Tower – Elden Ring Wiki Guide – IGN If you follow the direction of the Bellum Church Site of Grace and past the Raya Lucarian Soldiers encampment, head right before the entrance of the, Go up the mountain pass, and soon enough, your Madness meter should start going up—this is due to the Frenzied Commoners up above the tower.Try to clear the Frenzied Rats fast enough and pay attention to the meter as not only will you take massive damage, you’ll be stunned due to the Madness for a brief moment.

Climb up the tower and kill the remaining enemies, and that should prevent your Madness meter from going up. Move south towards the stone-walled village once you’re done with the Frenzy-Flaming Tower. The enemies inside are all frenzied by Madness, so try to take them down one group at a time to avoid getting cornered.

Be sure to loot up the from a corpse at the edge of the village and the from inside one of the houses. advertisement
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How many stages of madness are there?

Phases of Psychosis The typical course of a psychotic episode can be thought of as having three phases: Prodrome Phase, Acute Phase, and Recovery Phase.
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Is madness an instant?

Is Madness at Instant or Sorcery Speed? – One of madness’ strengths is that it’s an ability that can be used at instant speed. This means that as long as you have a way to discard cards at any given time, you can cast sorceries, enchantments, and creatures at instant speed.
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Is madness inherited?

Will mental illness run in my family? – If someone in your family has a mental illness, you might be worried about developing the same condition. If you have a mental illness you might be worried that your children or siblings will develop the same or a different mental illness.

	Schizophrenia	Bipolar
Lifetime chance. This is the chance of someone in the general population developing the condition during their lifetime.	1 in 100	1 in 100
If one of your biological parents has the condition	6 in 100	10 in 100
If both of your biological parents have the condition	45 in 100	40 in 100
If your brother or sister has the condition	9 in 100	13 in 100
If your identical twin has the condition	40-50 in 100	40 – 70 in 100
If your non-identical twin has the condition	17 in 100	20 in 100
If a second degree relative has the condition. For example, your aunt, uncle or grandparent.	3 in 100	5 in 100

It might be helpful to look at the figures in the table in a different way. For example, the chance of someone developing bipolar disorder is 1 out of 100. This means that 99 people are not going to develop bipolar disorder. If one of your parents has bipolar disorder, the chance of you not developing the condition is 90 out of 100.
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What causes madness?

Risk factors – Certain factors may increase your risk of developing a mental illness, including:

A history of mental illness in a blood relative, such as a parent or sibling Stressful life situations, such as financial problems, a loved one’s death or a divorce An ongoing (chronic) medical condition, such as diabetes Brain damage as a result of a serious injury (traumatic brain injury), such as a violent blow to the head Traumatic experiences, such as military combat or assault Use of alcohol or recreational drugs A childhood history of abuse or neglect Few friends or few healthy relationships A previous mental illness

Mental illness is common. About 1 in 5 adults has a mental illness in any given year. Mental illness can begin at any age, from childhood through later adult years, but most cases begin earlier in life. The effects of mental illness can be temporary or long lasting.
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How do you stop frenzied flame tower?

Frenzy-Flaming Tower Walkthrough – Above the tower is a repeatedly-burning flame of frenzy, which will increase your madness levels if you’re within view of it. You can use rocks as cover during your approach, or use the ravine to the left of the tower to come behind it, and use the Spiritspring to jump up next to it and quickly get inside the tower, which will protect you from increasing madness.
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Can you refuse Frenzied Flame?

Easily the most difficult ending to achieve in Elden Ring, the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending requires you to take a bunch of steps that are hidden, out of sight. While you will inevitably come across hints of this quest on your adventure, actually making your way to the Cathedral of the Forsaken and speaking with the Three Fingers to acquire the Flame of Frenzy requires a bunch of esoteric knowledge.

But that’s what Souls games are all about, right? In this guide we’ll be walking you through all the steps you need to take in order to achieve the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending But keep in mind that acquiring the Flame of Frenzy will lock you out of the other possible endings – unless you abandon the Flame of Frenzy after, that is, which requires another complex set of steps.

For everything you need to know about the Flame of Frenzy and the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending, read through our guide below. If you’ve already taken a look at our guide to find the Dung Eater in the Sewer Capital Gaol, then you will be familiar with the Subterranean Shunning Grounds, The sewers underneath Leyndell go very deep, and don’t even count as one of the world’s underground areas. You will need to venture deep into the Subterranean Shunning Grounds until you manage to find Mohg, the Omen, He lurks at the bottom of the sewer, guarding the way to finding the Three Fingers, Once you’ve defeated Mohg, rest at the Site of Grace (you really want to rest before going forward) and then roll at the wall behind the treasure chest in the room. In this new area you must descend deep into the catacombs below. A few enemies here will try to use Frenzy attacks, so be cautious. You will need to use the protruding coffins sticking out of the walls here as platforms to safely descend all the way to the bottom of this shaft. Once at the bottom, the floor will fall through, opening up yet another new area, and a Site of Grace. Now we’ve reached the Frenzied Flame Proscription Site of Grace, we can find a large imposing door up ahead. Before that though, speak with Milena at the Site of Grace, if she is still with you. Only wretches can pass through – which means you need to unequip all of your gear, otherwise you won’t be able to push this door open. Yep, get naked, including weapons and talismans. Inside the door you will find the Three Fingers, Well, two fingers and a thumb, really. The Three Fingers will embrace you, leaving you with a Burning Scar, It will scar much of your body. Once you have obtained the Burning Scar, interacting with the Fractured Marika statue after the final boss fight, you will be given the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending. But there is actually one extra scene you can potentially witness here. If you obtain the Burning Scar before fighting the Fire Giant, where Milena sacrifices her body for the sake of burning the thorns covering the Erdtree, Milena will instead leave you, forcing you to burn yourself. At the end of the game, after the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending, Milena will actually appear to confront the player – assuming she’s still alive, that is. So you’ve collected the Flame of Frenzy and regret it, now what? Well, your relationship with Milena might not be saved, but you can reverse your choice to embrace the Flame of Frenzy, opening up access to the other Elden Ring endings. The process of removing the Flame of Frenzy from your character, and giving you access to the other game endings again, involves completing the entirety of Millicent ‘s questline, Once you’ve completed Millicent’s questline as we’ve outlined in our guide, you will have Miquella’s Needle, You can use Miquella’s Needle to tame the Flame of Frenzy, but only in one location: Dragonlord Placidusax ‘s boss arena, hidden in Farum Azula, Use Miquella’s Needle here like any other consumable item, and you will be asked if you wish to ” tame the flame of frenzy? ” Taming the flame will lock you out of the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending, and return access to the other game endings. It’s a long road, but with all of this information, you can earn the Flame of Frenzy, and then reject it again if you wish.
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Is the frenzied flame ending good Elden Ring?

How to unlock the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending – From Software The Lord of Frenzied Flame wastes no time destroying the Erd Tree. The Lord of Frenzied Flame is considered the bad ending of Elden Ring, as it sees you become a destructive dictator, consuming the world in the flame of chaos. To unlock it, you’ll need to follow Hyetta’s quest all the way to the Three Fingers and become their champion.

After beating Godrick, meet Hyetta on the Lake-Facing Cliffs and give her some Shabriri Grapes. Do this again whenever you encounter her to learn more about the Three Fingers and her quest. Meet Shabriri near the Zamor Ruins Site of Grace and exhaust his dialog. Make it to the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds under the Capital City by jumping down the well. Fight your way to the Cathedral of the Forsaken and beat Morg, the Omen (Not to be confused with the Shard Holder of the same name.) Activate the pedestal to find a hidden path. Carefully work your way down to the bottom. Take off all your gear then approach the door. You need to be naked to do this, apart from your underwear. Allow the Three Fingers to brand you and become their champion. Defeat the final boss to become the Lord of Frenzied Flame.

Choosing this path will effectively betray every other faction in Elden Ring, but you can still complete their quests, you just can’t unlock their endings. Becoming the Lord of Frenzied flame will see your character engulfed by the flame, becoming its living embodiment.

You’ll then be able to burn the world to ashes and remake it in your image, but beware, Melina won’t take kindly to your betrayal. If you’re looking for more ways to overcome the many difficult challenges in Elden Ring, we’ve got plenty of other guides to help. You can find them by clicking here or clicking the individual links below.

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What does maidenless mean in Elden Ring?

Screenshot: FromSoftware / Kotaku Picture this: you’ve just crawled out of the Elden Ring tutorial area. You’ve just taken down the first miniboss with your hide barely intact. Then out of absolutely nowhere, a stranger makes fun of you for not having a girlfriend.

Or at least, that’s how many players have chosen to interpret one of the earliest NPC interactions in Elden Ring, Here’s the full line: “You are maidenless. A bit player, fully divorced from the strength of runes.” What the NPC Varré actually means, though it’s not immediately clear to the player, is that you need a “Maiden” guide who will allow you to turn the runes you pick up into stat gains.

But it’s a lot funnier to imagine that he was actually calling you out for playing Elden Ring on a Saturday night instead of meeting someone nice at a bar. This whole interaction is so much better if you started out playing as a Wretch, which is a class where you start out almost buck-naked.

1. Forget maidens.
2. Some of these Tarnished don’t even have any clothes.
3. Don’t worry; you’ll eventually meet the Maiden after finding three Sites of Grace aboveground.
4. But it hasn’t stopped players from adopting “maidenless” as a community in-joke.
5. While simply calling someone “Maidenless” gets the point across, some people have gone a step further with the memes.

One of these meme formats involves Megamind due to a similar meme about not having any girlfriends. G/O Media may get a commission These jokes are more self deprecating than serious, since anyone who is playing this Soulslike game right now is likely sinking absurd amounts of time into their run.
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Is madness a mental illness?

The villains of the piece – Every good narrative has to have its villains, and it is clear who Scull thinks they are in this story: the mad-doctors, alienists, and psychiatrists, latterly aided and abetted by the pharmaceutical companies. Certainly, across the centuries, many weird and cruel treatments have been applied: drilling holes in the skull, domination and incarceration, infecting with malaria, removal of the teeth and even the stomach, insulin coma therapy, removal of toxic mothers through ‘parentectomy’, and prefrontal leucotomy. Portrait of Dr Heinrich Stadelmann, 1922, by Otto Dix. © DACS 2015. Heinrich Stadelmann was a German psychiatrist, specializing in hypnotherapy. The portrait was painted while Dix was working on his etchings depicting the horrors of World War I. Scull is also concerned by the extent to which the mad have been exploited for their money-making potential.

1. In the case of rich patients the transaction is direct, as satirized in Molière’s Le Malade imaginaire.
2. Psychoanalysts seem to have been particularly skilled with such transactions.
3. Edith Rockefeller McCormick became one of Jung’s Dollar Tanten, while Franz Alexander was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation until it was discovered that most of the money ‘had been transferred to the pockets of Herr Doktor Professor Alexander, who aspired to live the life of a German Aristocrat’.

But the most notorious was Jacques Lacan, who sometimes reduced the Freudian 50-minute therapeutic hour (but not the fee) to a few minutes in which he might whisper a single parole to the patient. In this way he could see as many as 10 patients an hour.

1. In the case of poor patients, money could be made from the state by founding mad houses and asylums.
2. These institutions flourished throughout the 19th century and took in increasing numbers of patients.
3. However, by the middle of the 20th century, state support for these big institutions had ceased.
4. Examples of the mistreatment of patients were repeatedly being uncovered and the costs were becoming unaffordable.

Patients were released into the ‘community’, but the belief of some that this release from institutionalization would itself be a cure has not been fulfilled. Money could be made from drugs, also often paid for by the state, through developing palliative, rather than curative treatments, that have to be administered for the rest of the patient’s life and also by claiming that ‘better’ treatments had been developed (e.g.

• The atypical anti-psychotics), once the patents on the earlier treatments had lapsed ( Tyrer and Kendall, 2009).
• Of course, all these critiques beg the question of how to deal with the suffering associated with madness, for patients, relatives, and carers.
• Desperate people will always find someone who claims to have the answer.

The sharpest criticism of psychiatry made by Scull is the suggestion that our understanding of madness and our ability to treat it have hardly advanced since the Middle Ages. This criticism is unfair. Many of us believe that some progress has been made—even sedation by drugs would seem more humane than straightjackets or chains.

But, to some extent, psychiatrists have only themselves to blame given how they define their domain as ‘mental science’. Many years ago I worked in the Psychiatry Unit at the MRC Clinical Research Centre in Northwick Park Hospital. Our brief was to elucidate the biological basis of schizophrenia. At that time the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-III stated that a diagnosis of schizophrenia was appropriate only if ‘the disturbance is not due to Organic Mental Disorder’.

In its turn ‘Organic Mental Disorder’ was defined as, ‘psychological or behavioural abnormality associated with transient or permanent dysfunction of the brain’. In other words, if we found a brain basis for schizophrenia, it would cease to be schizophrenia.

1. This exclusion criterion was removed from subsequent versions, perhaps in part because of the increasing evidence of brain abnormalities in schizophrenia ( Johnstone et al., 1976 ).
2. This specific example illustrates a more general problem.
3. Psychiatric illnesses are typically defined (as on the website of the World Health Organisation) as ‘disorders that manifest as abnormalities of thought, feeling, or behaviour’.

This is in contrast to neurological diseases, which are ‘physical diseases of the nervous system’. This distinction lies behind the quip that neurologists take all of the curable diseases and leave psychiatrists with the ones that cannot be helped. ‘General paresis of the insane’ is a striking example of a psychiatric illness that became curable.

1. In the 1880s general paresis of the insane, as Scull notes, accounted for ∼20% of the male patients admitted to asylums.
2. Symptoms included mania, delusions and dementia.
3. Originally it was thought that general paresis of the insane was a severe consequence of any kind of insanity caused by a weakness of character or constitution.

However, by 1822 Bayle had demonstrated that it was a specific disease entity associated with brain lesions (chronic arachnitis). By the end of the 19th century the disease was increasingly linked with syphilis and, in 1913, syphilitic spirochaetes were identified in the brains of patients demonstrating conclusively that it was caused by syphilis.

1. After World War II, the use of penicillin to treat syphilis had almost eliminated general paresis of the insane.
2. This was a dramatic success for research.
3. Indeed, it was such a success that this form of madness is now effectively invisible.
4. In Wikipedia it is characterized as, ‘originally considered a psychiatric disorder’.

More recently there have been similar advances in our understanding of many other disorders previously associated with madness, such as epilepsy, dementia, and certain forms of mental deficiency such as Down syndrome and Rett syndrome. Rett syndrome is now known to be caused by mutations in the gene MECP2 and, at least in mice, can be reversed by restoration of gene function.

• Rett syndrome has been removed from DSM-5, the most recent edition of the American psychiatrists’ diagnostic bible, because it has a known genetic cause.
• Evidence for this changing attitude to mental disorders can be found by looking at the topics of papers published in neurology and psychiatry journals.

Borrowing an idea from the anonymous blogger, Neuroskeptic, I compared numbers of publications in the British Journal of Psychiatry (previously known as the Journal of Mental Science ) and Brain. Between 1910 and 1929, ∼90% of the papers on epilepsy were published in the psychiatry journal, but by 1990–2009 this had fallen to ∼10%.

• Similarly, for dementia the fall over the same period was from ∼95% to 40%.
• In contrast, the psychiatry journal continues to publish the vast majority of the papers on schizophrenia.
• Of course, the psychiatrists are still called on to cope with the behavioural problems associated with the ‘neurological’ disorders.

Neuroscience research has had considerable success in elucidating and sometimes curing various disorders, but after each success the disorder either becomes invisible or ceases to be considered an example of madness. So it seems strangely inevitable that madness can only ever be associated with disorders that we do not understand.
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What exactly is the madness?

Historical views and treatment – Madness, the non-legal word for insanity, has been recognized throughout history in every known society. Some traditional cultures have turned to witch doctors or shamans to apply magic, herbal mixtures, or folk medicine to rid deranged persons of evil spirits or bizarre behavior, for example.
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What are the three types of madness?

In this essay, the author –

Opines that people get mad. we all do at some point, but i feel like i fit into two of the four main types of madness.Explains that sad-mad people tend to self-blame. they react in ways where they get into their feelings, hurt emotionally, and think or overthink about their situation.Explains that when they get mad and get sad about it, they lose focus and worry. they usually talk to a person about the situation to let their feelings out.Explains that when they feel like no one will understand them, they either pray to god or write it down. talking to people affects them in a way where they are listened to and given advice.Opines that glad-mad people tend to be happy throughout life’s ups and downs. they live in the moment and don’t let anger drive them.Opines that anger can influence people throughout their lives if they focus on just being mad.Explains that they learn to forgive and put their anger to a side. they also like to hear what other people got to say about the situation, so they can better understand them.Opines that it is important to recognize the effects of anger because it affects in the way you control yourself and let the people around you know how mad you get.

I believe I fall into this type of madness as well because glad-mad people tend to be happy throughout life’s ups and downs. According to the article, glad-mad people live in the moment and never regret the past or what is coming their way. I feel I’m glad-mad most of the time because I live in the moment and I don’t let anger drive me, I just go along with what God has planned for me and the obstacles he gives to me.

Sometimes I just don’t let anger affect me, I feel like it’s bad luck staying mad. I suppose it’s bad luck because you can forget what’s important and miss out on your day. Anger can influence people throughout their lives if they focus on just being mad. They can be fed up with a madness that can turn to an illness, which is what I worry about because I wouldn’t like to be mad all the time.

I would like to focus on the importance, which for me is to be happy with what I got because not everything could be resolved by staying
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Can you fall into madness?

Why and how normal people go mad Just about any ordinary person can slip into madness, believes APA President Philip G. Zimbardo, PhD. In fact, all it may take to trigger the process is a special kind of blow to one’s self-image to push someone over the edge of sanity.

“My colleagues and I have demonstrated that situational forces.can generate surprisingly powerful contributions to make good people behave in bad ways,” he said to a standing-room-only crowd in his presentation, “Why and how normal people go mad,” at APA’s 2002 Annual Convention in Chicago. The basis for his ideas is his discontinuity theory, which posits that when people perceive a violation in some domain of functioning vital to their sense of self-esteem, they will search for ways to explain or rationalize the experience.

An A-student who suddenly gets poor grades, for example, may develop sexual or eating problems, or exhibit violent fantasies-symptoms that could warrant a clinical diagnosis of psychopathology. But, according to Zimbardo’s theory, many people who exhibit symptoms of “madness” are “reasoning with insufficient data or rigidly defending the wrong theory,” he said.

As Zimbardo pointed out to attendees, Voltaire said, “What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.” False cues Sometimes, Zimbardo said, the source of a person’s discontinuity can be physical but mistakenly attributed to a psychological disorder. “Think of this,” he said.

“You’re going deaf but aren’t really aware of it. You walk into a room full of friends and you see their mouths moving, but you don’t hear them. You ask, ‘Why are you whispering?’ and they say ‘We’re not whispering.’ You say, ‘Why are you lying?’ and then you end up in a confrontation and people think, ‘Gee, this guy is really crazy.'” That process can produce paranoid delusions, he noted.

But many people deemed “crazy” might not be crazy after all, he said. A 1989 study (Koran, Archives of General Psychiatry ) of 500 patients in several California state mental hospitals showed a large percentage had physical diseases that could cause or exacerbate a mental disorder-yet they were not detected by professionals.

Could some of these patients’ psychological disturbances have been explained by medical problems and thus “cured”? Zimbardo asked. And why is the real root of what seems to be pathological behavior undetected or ignored? So too, prevailing societal biases may mask the root cause of “mad” behavior.

Take for example the “witches” in Salem, Mass., who shared a diet based on rye grain, which in wet, cold climates like that of 1692, grew a fungus that produced a natural hallucinogen, like LSD. The girls probably weren’t mad, just suffering from microbiological food poisoning. Society offered witchcraft as a readily available explanation for these discontinuities, Zimbardo pointed out.

Recent research Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University tested his theory on normal, healthy, hypnotized college students. In their study, the researchers generated a discontinuity-they induced sudden increases in heart rate and respiration that created unexplained arousal characterized by feelings such as anxiety, anger, nervousness or restlessness-in these student volunteers.

The volunteers were then guided to incorrectly attribute the cause of their problem through potential cognitive, environmental or social explanations for the discontinuity, as suggested by the researchers. In effect, they duped the students into believing the wrong reasons for their discontinuity. Zimbardo predicted that when the volunteers were unable to come up with acceptable explanations or social comparisons for their arousal, their inability to deal with it would eventually lead to predictable symptoms of psychopathology.

He was right. When volunteers incorrectly blamed situational or environmental factors for their arousal, they began to exhibit phobic behaviors. When students were led to wrongly believe that the source of their anxiety was physical, they began to show signs of hypochondria or somatoform disorders.

And attributing such discontinuities to social causes created paranoid symptoms. Similarly, in earlier research he and colleagues have done, Zimbardo noted, hypnotically induced unexplained deafness in volunteers generated experimental paranoia. Like the volunteers themselves, therapists involved as raters in the experiments who were asked to determine the cause for the volunteers’ symptoms mistakenly attributed the behaviors to varying clinical conditions.

“The seeds of madness,” said Zimbardo, “can be planted in anyone’s backyard.” But “mad” behavior may not necessarily be the product of “some ‘premorbid’ personality disorder,” he noted. Psychologists would do well to consider physical, situational and societal influences-and the timing of these influences-in their work with patients.
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