Talk:Jumping Frenchmen of Maine
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"... it was brought on by conditions at their lumber camps and was psychological, not neurological." What conditions in the camps were those? GangofOne 01:50, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Special Circumstances
Those conditions are called exposure to visual Subliminal Distraction. They appear in the business office design field and are only known among those who work with "Systems Furniture, Cubicles"
The connection between Latah and JFMD is that in both cases many people live in a single-room arrangement. Bunkhouses were used in Maine and Longhouses in Malaysia.
In the case of Latah, when someone performs work requiring concentration and needs enough light to see the object being repaired or constructed they must sit by a door in a longhouse. The movement of others in and out that door will be subliminally detected by the worker. Sheltered porches running the length of the longhouse provide other spaces for workers but the same exposure can happen.
In 1880's Maine reading, repairing cold weather gear, or sharpening tools for the next day's work allowed similar exposure.
JFMD disappeared when modern logging equipment replaced remote lumber camps and bunkhouses.
Jumping diseases appear around the world where families and groups live in small, single-room huts, hogans, yurts, and other housing that forces close confinement.
The phenomenon to cause the problem was discovered in the 1960's when knowledge workers began having mental breaks while using newly designed movable workstations. The problem was researched and it was discovered that subliminal sight and peripheral vision reflexes had acted to cause the mental events. By 1968 Herman Miller Inc had added movable panels to block peripheral vision for a concentrating worker. The mental breaks stopped. A biography of Robert Propst on the company site claims invention of the Cubicle in 1968.
In Dr. Ronald C Simmons' book "Boo! Culture, Experience, and the Startle Reflex," he relates cases of the startle and behavior-matching syndrome appearing in factories in the US.
The links and other information are available at VisionAndPsychosis.Net.
http://visionandpsychosis.net/Culture_Bound_Syndromes.htm
An example of other psychiatric symptoms being caused by exposure to Subliminal Distraction is the Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898. Eighteen men trapped on the Belgica, locked in polar ice, began to go insane. The same mental breaks have happened in modern polar scientific stations and aboard the Russian space mission, Salut 5 - Soyuz 21. An article from the Smithsonian Air and Space magazine cites several Russian missions with problems including fist fights over chess games.
Brief quotes about that expedition from "Through the First Antarctic Night," Cook, are available on this page.
http://visionandpsychosis.net/Astronauts_Insanity.htm
Other material is from "Bold Endeavors," Stuster.
L K Tucker 68.19.43.214 22:11, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
- WHy not add this to the article? GangofOne 22:53, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] GangofOne Answer
Visual Subliminal Distraction is not recognized in the United States. As fast as you can write this into the article someone will remove it.
Go to the Shawn Woolley entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Shawn_Woolley
Although the Woolley article uses some of my research the information involving Subliminal Distraction was deleted.
PhD's in psychology cannot believe that the entire office furniture industry around the world could not exist without Cubicle Level Protection.
I am working on finding the original publication of the discovery. I should have received a thesis from a Master's degree candidate in Australia but she has probably lost my email address.
L K Tucker 68.19.34.74 00:07, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
