The Infectious Mind is a gripping investigation into one of the strangest frontiers of human behaviour: how physical and psychological symptoms can spread socially – like viruses.

From the dancing plagues of medieval Europe to the Pokémon episode that reportedly hospitalised several hundred, social contagion has shaped collective health and hysteria for centuries. Today, platforms like TikTok and YouTube are driving a new wave – from functional tics to dissociative identities – with symptoms that mimic those of others and spread at startling speed.

Drawing on history, neurology, psychology and culture, social scientist Matilda Gosling shows how our brains and bodies absorb the emotional currents around us, and how distress finds new forms of expression in each era. This is a book about why symptoms spread, why some become epidemics, and how we can protect ourselves in an age of mass connectedness.

Praise

‘Gosling demonstrates a mastery of the literature as she moves across five centuries of case material, from the dancing plagues of early modern Europe to the recent wave of functional tics spreading through teenagers online… An important contribution to a field too often left to sensationalism.’
Dr Robert Bartholomew

‘The Infectious Mind is  a rich and compelling analysis of socially transmitted illness.  Symptoms like pain and anxiety and itching and convulsions can be spread – like viruses-   by the human mind.   If our minds can “infect” us,  can they not also “cure” us?    Social Scientist , Matilda Gosling,  is hopeful.    She makes the case magnificently in this gripping investigation.’
Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine

‘The mind is no less susceptible to epidemics than the body… History is riddled with epidemics of weird mind viruses, and Matilda Gosling documents them all in this fascinating yet disquieting book’
Richard Dawkins FRS, Emeritus Professor, University of Oxford