Talk:Cabin fever

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Cabin Fever was an incident of sudden berserk violence when two trappers, mountain men, attempted to over-winter in small cabins in the 1830's. Beaver and other pelts were at their best when in full winter thickness. They ran trap lines over the countryside during the winter. Accounts of Cabin Fever were in books about figures such as Jim Bridger. It happened when the men were snowed in and were confined in the small room for weeks.

There are stories of an Axe murder in Russian polar station during an argument over a chess game. When fistfights began to happen in Russian space missions, again over chess games, Russia banned chess in space. The same conditions are present in polar stations, space capsules, and those small 1830's trapper's cabins. The same exposure to Subliminal Distraction happens anytime two or more people attempt to live and work in too-small single-room situations.

Those berserk episodes of violence still happen today in locations where families live in traditional or ethnic housing. These are usually single-room mud huts- Africa, Hogans- Navajo, Yurts and other tents in Lapp nomadic groups (Lapp Panic is a S-M behavior). In Malaysia the sudden violence is called Amok, among the Navajo it is called iich'aa and here in the united states it is called Going Postal. All these bizarre events are Culture Bound Syndromes, some from the DSM.

The best way to understand this effect is to study the jumping diseases. Jumping Frenchmen of Maine was discovered when French Canadian lumberjacks began demonstrating strange startle-matching behaviors. The same behavior was found in Malaysia where is is called, Latah. Then other cases were found around the world. In all these locations where the subjects have vastly different beliefs, customs, and different levels of technological advancement, victims live in single-room housing. In 1880's Maine lumberjacks lived in bunkhouses. In Malaysia entire villages lived in longhouses. In his book "Boo!," Dr Simmons, recounts single cases of startle-matching behavior in workers on factory floors in the US. All those locations allow exposure to Subliminal Distraction.

The reason to study startle-matching to illustrate sudden violence, is that the S-M behaviors are so strange they cannot be mistaken and no argument can be made that it might be something else or one or more cases do not meet the standard for inclusion.

Why does one level of exposure produce violence and another startle-matching? I don't know except that the extreme hyper-suggestibility of the S-M cases indicates that operant conditioning is involved. When one is involved in a dispute the operant conditioning raises the dispute to a psychotic-like level so that when the mental break associated with Subliminal Distraction in business offices happens, violence is the outcome. It would follow that college suicides happen when the operant conditioning works with the worries of college failure or other issues.

Visual Subliminal Distraction is not recognized in the United States and has been ridiculed by moderators for Wikipedia. Here SD only refers to the physiology of sensor cells that do not stop sending neural impulses to your brain when stimulated even though you dissociate slightly, ignoring everything happening around you. You do that when you read, write, use a computer, become lost in thought or daydream. When the stimulation is movement in far peripheral vision it is detected as threat-movement to trigger a startle and vision reflex. Subliminal efforts your brain makes to force the startle are also a Subliminal Distraction.

In the 1960's that phenomenon caused mental breaks for knowledge workers using the first prototypes of movable close-spaced office workstations. The Cubicle solved that problem.

http://VisionAndPsychosis.Net index and page list. http://visionandpsychosis.net/Culture_Bound_Syndromes.htm http://visionandpsychosis.net/Astronauts_Insanity.htm

L K Tucker 68.211.73.143 03:07, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

any point of putting this on the talk page instead of the main page?

[edit] NO

As fast as you can edit this into the article someone will come along and eliminate it. Information on the mental events that cause this problem are not in text books. A grad student who emailed me said that the information is only in lecture material. She said students are expected to "pick it up" during their course study in design. The business office problem does appear on TV shows as a novelty item. The last person I spoke with about that said it had been on a medical show aired over dish network in the last three years.

If you can name any one of the several shows that have featured this visit the site link above and email me.

L K Tucker 68.217.113.57 21:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)