Paris syndrome

I just read about this for the first time today-- 

Was es nicht gibt in dieser Welt!

"I wondered who was ruder: myself, for not understanding the local customs, or my hosts, for making me feel so ill at ease.

It's not that the French are necessarily rude - but Parisians certainly can be.

A psychiatrist has coined a term for its effect on Japanese visitors to the city: "Paris Syndrome".

Every year, several Japanese tourists have to be repatriated from Paris after falling prey to severe culture shock at the hands of the less than polite Parisians.

Waiters who fail to understand their order, taxi drivers who take them to the wrong place and then charge double.

All this is too much for some to take, as their dream of the city of light crumbles into a nightmare of darkness, creating a sense of rejection and paranoia."

Paris syndrome (French: Syndrome de Paris, Japanese: パリ症候群, Pari shōkōgun) is a transient mental disorder exhibited by some individuals when visiting or going on vacation to Paris, as a result of extreme shock derived from their discovery that Paris is not what they had expected it to be. The syndrome is characterized by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (perceptions of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, or hostility from others), derealization, depersonalization, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, and others, such as vomiting.^[1] Similar syndromes include Jerusalem syndrome and Stendhal syndrome. The condition is commonly viewed as a severe form of culture shock. It is particularly noted among Japanese travelers. It is not listed as a recognised condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Professor Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist working in France, is credited as the first person to diagnose the condition in 1986.^[2] However, later work by Youcef Mahmoudia, physician with the hospital Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, indicates that Paris syndrome is "a manifestation of psychopathology related to the voyage, rather than a syndrome of the traveller".^[3] He theorized that the excitement resulting from visiting Paris causes the heart to accelerate, causing giddiness and shortness of breath, which results in hallucinations in the manner similar to the Stendhal syndrome described by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini in her book La sindrome di Stendhal.^[4].

Japanese visitors are observed to be especially susceptible.^[2][5] It was first noted in Nervure, the French journal of psychiatry, in 2004.^[6]From the estimated six million yearly visitors, the number of reported cases is not large: according to an administrator at the Japanese embassy in France, around 20 Japanese tourists a year are affected by the syndrome.^[7]

Mario Renoux, the president of the Franco-Japanese Medical Association, states in Libération': "Des Japonais entre mal du pays et mal de Paris" ("The Japanese are caught between homesickness and Paris sickness", 13 December 2004) and that Japanese magazines are primarily responsible for creating this syndrome. Renoux indicates that Japanese media, magazines in particular, often depict Paris as a place where most people on the street look like "stick-thin" models and most women dress in high fashion brands such as Louis Vuitton.^[8]

via {bbc}

via {wikipedia}