Panic! Affect Contagion, Mimesis and Suggestion in the Social Field

Anna Gibbs, Cultural Studies Review, 2008, 14, 2.

Abstract: This essay describes the phenomenon of panic from both neurological and affective points of view. It draws on the work of Japp Panksepp, who argues for the importance of distinguishing between fear as a response to physical threat, and panic as a response to the loss of the attachment object. While fear flees, panic, perhaps contrary to appearances, seeks security. This view of panic throws a new light on classic analyses of crowd behaviour, among them those of Le Bon, Tarde and Canetti, but it also has implications for how panic takes hold via electronic media, and for how outbreaks may be calmed. Finally, the essay argues that mediatised panic is a distraction from fear—in which anything at all may represent physical danger, but which at least offers a range of possible responses for addressing the problem, and offers the opportunity for the transformative work performed by cognition on affect. Here the paper draws on the script theory of Silvan Tomkins to provoke questions of the social usefulness of fear in the face of some current arguments to the contrary.

Excerpt: Julian Jaynes, writing brilliantly and eccentrically in 1976, sees trance states as a reactivation of the ‘neural patterning’ associated with a stage in human development before the invention of consciousness. Jaynes sees the ‘bicameral paradigm’ as comprising ‘collective cognitive imperative, induction, trance, and archaic authorization, so for him neither trance – nor mimesis – originate in affect contagion or sympathy. He argues, rather, that trance and various forms of everyday distraction are quite distinctly different phenomena.