Stendhal Syndrome: Extreme Emotions When Faced With Beauty
It is common experience certain sensations when we have a stimulus in front of us that motivates them.
However, there are people with great sensitivity to these stimuli, and they react exceptionally to the emotions aroused by a work of art, a landscape or a film.
In these extreme cases, we usually speak of “Stendhal syndrome”, also known as “Traveler Syndrome” or “Florence Syndrome”.
The history of Stendhal Syndrome
In 1817, Henri-Marie Beyle, a French writer who used the pseudonym Stendhal, moved to the Italian city of Florence, seduced by the colossal beauty and monumentality of the city, as well as by its close ties to the best Renaissance artists. Once there, visiting the Basilica of the Holy Cross, he was able to describe a series of sensations and emotions that, decades later, would be recognized as the symptomatological picture of the syndrome. In his writing Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio, he recounted the sensations he experienced in these terms:
“I had reached that level of emotion in which the celestial sensations given by the Fine Arts and passionate feelings collide. Leaving Santa Croce, my heart was beating, life was exhausted in me, I was afraid of falling.”
The recurrence of this type of sensations, which caused dizziness, vertigo and fainting, was documented as a unique case in the city of Florence, but science did not coin this condition as a distinct syndrome until, in 1979, the Florentine psychiatrist Graziella Magherini defined and categorized it as Stendhal syndrome.
Has Stendhal Syndrome been overstated? Does it really exist?
It is undeniable that some artistic expressions awaken emotions in us: the hair standing up while listening to a song or tears watching a romantic movie are reactions that all people have experienced.
However, Stendhal Syndrome refers to the experience of very intense sensations in front of an artistic piece, usually due to its beauty.
Today, many clinical psychologists recognize the disorder as true, but there is some controversy about it. After its coinage at the end of the 70s, at a historical moment when globalization led to an increase in travelers on a global scale and to Florence in particular, The number of reported cases increased considerablywhich led to the Syndrome also being known as “Florence Syndrome”.
For this reason, a part of the scientific community considers that the excessive dissemination of the syndrome could be motivated by economic interests on the part of the city of Florence itself, to increase the reputation of the beauty of its artistic monuments, in order to attract an even greater number of visitors.
The key could be in suggestion
Likewise, the interest aroused by Stendhal syndrome raises certain questions, such as reflecting on whether we are not fertilizing the ground and increasing the predisposition to experience this type of sensations described by Stendhal motivated by a deep suggestive state.
