Just What Is Mass Formation Psychosis?

Mass formation psychosis. It sounds like the name of your friend's failed high school band.

But in reality -- some reality -- it is the theory recently espoused by Robert Malone, MD, regarding public health behavior. Malone posits that promoting messages encouraging people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, among other scientifically validated pandemic communications, is an attempt to hypnotize groups of people to follow these messages against their will. Think Nazism, he has said.

This theory has been shared widely across cable news and social media, in large part because Malone was interviewed on Joe Rogan's popular podcast, "The Joe Rogan Experience."

But is "mass formation psychosis" even a legitimate medical idea?

No, it is not, according to reports and medical societies. "It seems to have been made up recently," Jay Van Bavel, PhD, associate professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, told Reuters.

Malone, who calls himself a consultant and former pathology and surgery professor, opposes the pro-vaccination messages being promulgated by federal agencies and public health leaders. These messages are being applied to manipulate people into getting vaccinated, he has argued.

Such action is an example of mass formation psychosis. When society "becomes decoupled from each other and has a free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don't make sense. ... Then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis," Malone told Rogan, Reuters reported. "They literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere ... They will follow that person -- it doesn't matter whether they lie to them or whatever, the data are irrelevant."

"Mass formation psychosis" garnered more than 100,000 interactions on public Facebook pages, groups, and verified profiles within a few days after the Rogan interview, according to reports citing the social media monitoring site CrowdTangle.

But the term does not exist in the psychology literature, nor does it appear in the American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology or its PsycNet database.

"There are similar-sounding concepts, like 'mass psychogenic illness,' but the scope of these is relatively narrow compared to what is being proposed here," Van Bavel said.

Malone's argument is similar to discredited concepts, such as "mob mentality" and "group mind," John Drury, MSc, PhD, a social psychologist at the University of Sussex in England, told the AP. "No respectable psychologist agrees with these ideas now."

The concept of a "mass psychosis" is "more metaphor than science, more ideology than fact," said Stephen Reicher, PhD, professor of social psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, who has studied crowd psychology for more than 40 years. "It has been totally discredited by contemporary work on groups and crowds."

"Telling people who disagree with you that they are deluded and in a state of psychosis is essentially a device to silence them and a form of disrespect," he told Reuters. "It alienates and hence undermines an attempt at dialogue. It isn't an explanation of the problem; it is part of the problem."

Malone responded to these reports with a column on Substack published Monday, arguing that mass formation is based on years of published science. An upcoming book by the Belgian psychology professor, Mattias Desmet, PhD, of the University of Ghent, who developed the theory will supply its "extensive" evidence base, including "seminal academic works," he wrote.

Malone also claimed that he is being censored for standing up to mass formation psychosis. "I am not alone in being targeted. Mainstream media has attacked and censored me and other prominent physicians/scientists who do not recite the governmental narrative. This has been developed into a standard process and deployed worldwide as a technique for suppressing physician dissent," he wrote on his website.

Ironically, Malone has gained more attention because he credits himself with developing the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines. He calls himself "the original inventor of mRNA vaccination as a technology, DNA vaccination, and multiple non-viral DNA and RNA/mRNA platform delivery technologies," as stated on his website.

Indeed, 30 years ago, he co-authored two papers on mRNA and mice that were referenced in a 2019 history of mRNA vaccines, Politifact reported.

"You can take the first step in the technology, but that doesn't mean that you invented the technology. All those other steps had to occur," Paul Offit, MD, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital Philadelphia, told Politifact.

Malone no longer practices, according to his website, which notes that he built and runs a consultancy and analytics firm specializing in biotechnology and clinical trials development with his wife.

He is certified by the American Board of Medical Specialties, according to his active Maryland Board of Physicians license, which was issued in 1999. He earned his medical degree from Northwestern University in 1991, and did postgraduate work at the University of Maryland and the University of California Davis.

He also worked as a professor at the University of California Davis, University of Maryland, and Armed Forces University of the Health Sciences, according to his website.

YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have taken action against Malone's media accounts, according to reports.

Malone did not return queries for comment by press time.

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