Stendhal syndrome: extreme emotions before beauty

It is usual experience certain sensations when we are faced with a stimulus that motivates them.

However, there are people with great sensitivity to these stimuli, and they react in an exceptional way to the emotions that a work of art, a landscape or a movie arouses.

Stendhal syndrome: discovering a singular disorder

In these extreme cases, it is often referred to as “Stendhal syndrome", Also known as" Traveler's 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 with 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 her writing Naples and Florence: A Trip from Milan to Reggio, she recounted the sensations experienced in these terms:

“I had reached that degree of emotion in which the heavenly sensations given by the Fine Arts and passionate feelings stumble. Leaving Santa Croce, my heart was beating, life was exhausted in me, I was scared of falling ".

The recurrence of this type of sensation, which could cause dizziness, vertigo and fainting spells, was documented as a unique case in the city of Florence, but science did not define this picture as a differentiated syndrome until, in 1979, the Florentine psychiatrist Graziella Magherini defined and categorized it What Stendhal syndrome.

Has Stendhal Syndrome been oversized? Really exist?

It is undeniable that some artistic expressions arouse emotions: the bristling of hair while listening a song or tears watching a romantic movie, are reactions that all people have experienced.

However, Stendhal Syndrome refers to the experimentation of very intense sensations in front of a artistic piece, normally due to its beauty.

Today, most clinical psychologists recognize the disorder as true, but there is some controversy about it. After its minting 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 considerably, which led to the Syndrome being also known as "Florence Syndrome".

For this reason, a part of the scientific community qualify that the excessive dissemination of the syndrome could be motivated by economic interests for part of the city of Florence itself, to increase the reputation of the beauty of its artistic monuments, in order to attract an even larger number of visitors.

The key could be in the suggestion

Likewise, the interest that Stendhal syndrome arouses raises certain questions, such as reflecting if we are not fertilizing the ground and increasing the predisposition to experience this type of sensations described by Stendhal moved by a deep state of suggestion.

Bibliographic references:

• Chalmers, D. (1999). The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory. Barcelona: Gedisa
• Gómez Milan, E; Pérez Dueñas, C. Consciousness: The Brain Puzzle
• Magherini, G. Stendhal syndrome. Ed. Espasa Calpe; Madrid, 1990
• Stendhal, Rome, Naples and Florence. Ed. Pretexts, 1999.