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![Eiffel tower at dawn horizontal](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Eiffel_tower_at_dawn_horizontal.jpg)
Paris syndrome is a sense of extreme
disappointment
Disappointment is the feeling of dissatisfaction that follows the failure of expectations or hopes to manifest. Similar to regret, it differs in that a person who feels regret focuses primarily on the personal choices that contributed to a ...
exhibited by some individuals when visiting
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, who feel that the city was not what they had expected. The condition is commonly viewed as a severe form of
culture shock
Culture shock is an experience a person may have when one moves to a cultural environment which is different from one's own; it is also the personal disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration ...
.
The syndrome is characterized by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute
delusion
A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some o ...
al states,
hallucination
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combinatio ...
s, feelings of
persecution
Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another individual or group. The most common forms are religious persecution, racism, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these term ...
(perceptions of being a victim of
prejudice
Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...
,
aggression
Aggression is overt or covert, often harmful, social interaction with the intention of inflicting damage or other harm upon another individual; although it can be channeled into creative and practical outlets for some. It may occur either reacti ...
,
hostility
Hostility is seen as form of emotionally charged aggressive behavior. In everyday speech it is more commonly used as a synonym for anger and aggression.
It appears in several psychological theories. For instance it is a facet of neuroticism in ...
from others),
derealization
Derealization is an alteration in the perception of the external world, causing those with the condition to perceive it as unreal, distant, distorted or falsified. Other symptoms include feeling as if one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, ...
,
depersonalization
Depersonalization can consist of a detachment within the self, regarding one's mind or body, or being a detached observer of oneself. Subjects feel they have changed and that the world has become vague, dreamlike, less real, lacking in significa ...
,
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
, as well as
psychosomatic
A somatic symptom disorder, formerly known as a somatoform disorder,(2013) dizziness
Dizziness is an imprecise term that can refer to a sense of disorientation in space, vertigo, or lightheadedness. It can also refer to disequilibrium or a non-specific feeling, such as giddiness or foolishness.
Dizziness is a common medical c ...
,
tachycardia
Tachycardia, also called tachyarrhythmia, is a heart rate that exceeds the normal resting rate. In general, a resting heart rate over 100 beats per minute is accepted as tachycardia in adults. Heart rates above the resting rate may be normal (su ...
,
sweating
Perspiration, also known as sweating, is the production of fluids secreted by the sweat glands in the skin of mammals.
Two types of sweat glands can be found in humans: eccrine glands and apocrine glands. The eccrine sweat glands are distr ...
most notably, but also others, such as vomiting.
While the syndrome has been particularly noted among Japanese tourists, it has also affected other travelers or temporary residents from East and Southeast Asia, such as those from China, South Korea, and Singapore.
History
Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist working at the
Sainte-Anne Hospital Center
The Sainte-Anne Hospital Center (French: ''Centre hospitalier Sainte-Anne'') is a hospital located in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, specializing in psychiatry, neurology, neurosurgery, neuroimaging and addiction. With its creation dating to ...
in France, coined the term in the 1980s
and published a book of the same name
in 1991. Katada Tamami of Nissei Hospital wrote of a Japanese patient with manic-depression who experienced Paris syndrome in 1998.
Later work by Youcef Mahmoudia, a physician with the hospital
Hôtel-Dieu de Paris In French-speaking countries, a hôtel-Dieu ( en, hostel of God) was originally a hospital for the poor and needy, run by the Catholic Church. Nowadays these buildings or institutions have either kept their function as a hospital, the one in Paris b ...
, indicates that Paris syndrome is "psychopathology related to travel, rather than a syndrome of the traveler."
He theorized that the excitement resulting from visiting Paris causes
the heart to accelerate, causing giddiness and shortness of breath, which results in
hallucinations
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combinatio ...
in the manner similar to (although spurring from opposite causes) the
Stendhal syndrome
Stendhal syndrome, Stendhal's syndrome or Florence syndrome is a psychosomatic condition involving Tachycardia, rapid heartbeat, Syncope (medicine), fainting, confusion and even hallucinations, allegedly occurring when individuals become exposed ...
described by Italian psychiatrist
Graziella Magherini
Graziella Magherini (; born 23 August 1927 in Florence) is an Italian psychiatrist at the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, Italy.
''Stendhal syndrome''
Graziella Magherini is best known for her 1989 book ''La sindrome di Stendhal'' ('' ...
in her book ''La sindrome di Stendhal''.
[ Total pages: 219]
Although the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
reported in 2006 that the Japanese embassy in Paris had a "24-hour hotline for those suffering from severe culture shock",
the Japanese embassy states no such hotline exists. Also in 2006, Miyuki Kusama, of the Japanese embassy in Paris, told ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' "There are around 20 cases a year of the syndrome and it has been happening for several years", and that the embassy had repatriated at least four Japanese citizens that year.
However, in 2011, the embassy stated that, despite media reports to the contrary, it did not repatriate Japanese nationals with Paris syndrome.
Susceptibility
![Japonais a paris](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Japonais_a_paris.jpg)
Of the estimated 1.1 million annual Japanese tourists in Paris, the number of reported cases is small. A journal also identified two types of the condition: Those who have previous history of psychiatric problems and those without morbid history who exhibit delayed-expression post traumatic stress disorder. In an interview with Slate.fr, Mahmoudia stated that of the fifty pathological travelers hospitalized each year, only three to five are Japanese.
The French newspaper ''
Libération
''Libération'' (), popularly known as ''Libé'' (), is a daily newspaper in France, founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Initially positioned on the far-left of France's ...
'' wrote an article on the syndrome in 2004. In the article, Mario Renoux, the president of the Franco-Japanese Medical Association, states that media and touristic advertising are primarily responsible for creating this syndrome.
Renoux indicates that while magazines often depict Paris as a place where most people on the street look like
models
A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure.
Models c ...
and most women dress in
high fashion
''Haute couture'' (; ; French for 'high sewing', 'high dressmaking') is the creation of exclusive custom-fitted high-end fashion design that is constructed by hand from start-to-finish. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Paris became th ...
brands, in reality neither
Van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inclu ...
nor models are on the street corners of Paris. In this view, the disorder is caused by positive representations of the city in popular culture, which leads to immense disappointment as the reality of experiencing the city is very different from expectations: tourists are confronted with an overcrowded and littered city (especially if compared to a Japanese metropolis) and a less than welcoming attitude by French hospitality workers like shopkeepers, restaurant and hotel personnel without considering the higher safety risks to which tourists used to safer cities are suddenly exposed.
In 2014, ''
Bloomberg Pursuits'' reported the syndrome also affected a few of the million annual Chinese tourists in Paris. Jean-Francois Zhou, president of the association of Chinese travel agencies in France (Association Chinoise des Agences de Voyages en France), said "Chinese people romanticize France, they know about French literature and French love stories... But some of them end up in tears, swearing they’ll never come back."
The article cited a 2012 survey from the Paris Tourism Office, in which safety and cleanliness received low scores, and also noted that the
Paris Police Prefecture
The police prefecture (french: préfecture de police) is the unit of the French Ministry of the Interior that provides police, emergency services, and various administrative services to the population of the city of Paris and the surrounding t ...
website was made available in Chinese,
in addition to English and French. However, Michel Lejoyeux, head of psychiatry at
Bichat–Claude Bernard Hospital
The Bichat–Claude Bernard Hospital ( ) is located in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France, and is operated by Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (APHP). It was founded in 1881 as lHôpital Bichat'' (after Xavier Bichat), incorporati ...
in Paris, noted in an interview that "Traveler's syndrome is an old story", and pointed to
Stendhal syndrome
Stendhal syndrome, Stendhal's syndrome or Florence syndrome is a psychosomatic condition involving Tachycardia, rapid heartbeat, Syncope (medicine), fainting, confusion and even hallucinations, allegedly occurring when individuals become exposed ...
which, conversely, is a set of symptoms arising from an overwhelmingly ''positive'' touristic experience.
See also
*
Japanese community of Paris
The Paris Metropolitan Area includes a Japanese community (french: Communauté japonaise de Paris; ja, パリの日本人コミュニティ). In 2013 the official number of Japanese residents in Paris was 16,277.Conte-Helm, p81
History
In the e ...
*
Jerusalem syndrome
Jerusalem syndrome is a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions, or other psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by a visit to the city of Jerusalem. It is not endemic to one single ...
*
Psychosis
Psychosis is a condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are incoherent speech and behavior ...
*
Stendhal syndrome
Stendhal syndrome, Stendhal's syndrome or Florence syndrome is a psychosomatic condition involving Tachycardia, rapid heartbeat, Syncope (medicine), fainting, confusion and even hallucinations, allegedly occurring when individuals become exposed ...
References
External links
''Paris Syndrome'', a 2010 short documentary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paris Syndrome
Culture-bound syndromes
Delusions
France–Japan relations
Psychopathological syndromes
Tourism in Paris