Psychiatrist says Monkey Man mystery is like penis panic. Fred Lapides of Bush Wacker (which has moved here) pointed me to this update on the Monkey Man matter, to which many webloggers have blinked.

An Indian psychiatrist has compared the Monkey Man

mystery to a penis-related panic among Nigerian men 10

years ago.

Doctor Sandeep Vohra, president of Delhi Psychiatric

Society, explains the Monkey Man panic as mass delusion.

Ten years ago, groups of Nigerian men became convinced

their genitals would disappear if they touched a stranger. Ananova

A male patient’s desperate fear that his genitals will shrink and retract into his body, causing his death, is a long-recognized ‘culture-bound syndrome’ appearing in most psychiatric textbooks alongside such entities as amok, latah, piblokto, and wihtigo. Called koro, it is described as common in the Malay archipelago and southern Chinese folk belief but occasionally reported in other cultures. Often, the affected person has secured a strong physical hold on his penis by tying or clamping it. Usually, it affects a single person at a time but occasional epidemic outbreaks have been reported around the world. I used to give an entertaining talk about unusual psychiatric syndromes.