Conversion Disorder In The Crucible

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In Salem, around the early 1600’s, witch hunts broke out to try and determine the underlying reason for the twitching and ticking of the citizens. Though, perhaps witchcraft was not the reason for the abnormal ways in which these people acted, but there was a more radical explanation. In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, many young girls of Salem, including Betty Paris, Ruth Putnam, Abigail Williams, and Mary Warren were accused of going into the woods with Reverend Parris’ slave, Tituba, where she apparently had them conjuring Ruth’s dead sisters. To do this, the girls danced around a fire, some naked, all while Tituba sang songs from her native country, Barbados. This, evidently was not something these Puritan girls were to be doing, …show more content…

Betty was the first one to develop this disorder, followed by Ruth, then Abigail and Mary Warren, all which they gained later on, because Conversion Disorder is “typically only affecting those who have seen other affected people” (Szalavitz). Particularly, when Mary Warren is being questioned by Danforth in court, the girls subconsciously mimic everything she says in reply to him. “Danforth asks Mary Warren if she can speak, but she says I cannot. The girls then mimic her, I cannot”(Miller, 1211). From this disorder, “Our brains also naturally and unconsciously engage us in conscious mimicry,” (Szalavitz), which is why the girls persistently repeat the things that Mary Warren does and says. When one of the girls has visions in the courtroom of Mary Warren being a ‘yellow bird,’ she defends herself that she is rather not up on the ceiling down on the ground with them, by saying “to all the girls, I 'm here! I’m here!” The girls then blurt out after her, “I 'm here! I’m here!” (Miller, 1209-1210). The girls did employ themselves in the constant mimicry of the actions and words that Mary Warren used because they were being controlled by witches. It was involuntary, and they could not help it because of the case of Conversion Disorder that they were …show more content…

This disorder has been an issue for a very long time. “Examples stretch back to the Middle Ages and early renaissance, when outbreaks of twitching and tics lead to witch hunts”(Szalavitz). Not only has this same disorder been mistaken for witchcraft before, but the exact same symptoms have been displayed back then, as now. Their antics in the woods could not have been the cause of the way that they acted, besides the evidence that they have this disorder, because they were infected immediately after Paris frightened them. The only explanation for this ‘mass hysteria’ is Conversion Disorder, “spread through groups by way of human’s unconscious social mimicry of one another 's behavior”(Szalavitz).
In the 1600’s the idea of witchcraft ran deep throughout the town of Salem. Though, in The Crucible, for Betty Paris, Ruth Putnam, Abigail Williams, and Mary Warren, it is safer to say that instead of being bewitched,or faking witchcraft, they were infected with Conversion Disorder. This inference is safe to be made, because they were involved in a stressful incident, Betty and Ruth were both inert and unresponsive, and Mary Warren and the rest of the girls displayed abnormal, uncontrollable movement, in which they began doing by means of mimicking each

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