Paris syndrome (in Japanese: パリ症候群, Pari shōkōgun) is a sense of extreme disappointment exhibited by many individuals when visiting Paris, who feel that the city does not live up to their expectations. The condition is commonly viewed as a severe form of culture shock. The cluster of psychiatric symptoms has been particularly noted among Japanese tourists, perhaps due to the way in which Paris has been idealized in Japanese culture. The syndrome is characterized by symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (perceptions of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, hostility from others), derealization, depersonalization, anxiety, as well as psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating most notably, but also others, such as vomiting.
Causes A 2004 paper by Viala et al. in French medical journal Nervure suggests a number of factors that may be behind the syndrome among Japanese tourists:
Language barrier Few Japanese tourists speak French and vice versa. The differences between these two languages poses serious obstacles to communication, increasing the individual's confusion and sense of anxiety and isolation. Interpersonal relationships Japanese sociability is based on being part of a group. A traveler who is apart from their community may feel particularly detached and isolated. Cultural differences The French enjoy a more informal temperament, in stark contrast to the more rigid Japanese culture, and Parisians' expressive variations in mood may be misinterpreted. Idealization of Paris The syndrome is also due to the gap observed between the idealized vision of Paris nurtured at home, and the actual reality of Paris. The city is often portrayed as an idyllic place of beauty, love and luxury goods. The reality is often different, and more similar to modern Japan than tourists might expect. Exhaustion The effort involved in organizing an intercontinental trip, which is often not for pleasure, but for business, combined with the consequences of jet lag increases the psychological destabilization of the Japanese traveler.
History As early as 1656, English physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne speculated upon possible psychopathology when touring cultural cities. In his A Letter to a Friend (pub. post 1690) he observes: He that is weak-legg'd must not be in Love with Rome, nor an infirm Head with Venice or Paris. Jean-Jacques Rousseau described in his Confessions a great disillusionment in his first visit to Paris in 1732.
How greatly did my first sight of Paris belie the idea I had formed of it! [...] I had imagined a city of a most imposing appearance, as beautiful as it was large, where nothing was to be seen but splendid streets and palaces of marble or gold. As I entered through the Faubourg Saint-Marceau, I saw nothing but dirty, stinking little streets, ugly black houses, a general air of squalor and poverty, beggars, carters, menders of clothes, sellers of herb-drinks and old hats. All this so affected me at the outset that all the real magnificence I have since seen in Paris has not been sufficient to efface my first impression, and I have always retained a secret aversion against living in the capital.
Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist working at the Sainte-Anne Hospital Center in France, coined the term in the 1980s and published a book of the same name in 1991. Katada Tamami of Nissei Hospital wrote of a Japanese patient with manic-depression, who experienced Paris syndrome in 1998. Later work by Dr. Youcef Mahmoudia, a psychiatrist with the hospital Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, indicates that Paris syndrome is "psychopathology related to travel, rather than a syndrome of the traveler." 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 Stendhal syndrome, although spurring from opposite causes, described by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini in her book La sindrome di Stendhal. Although the BBC reported in 2006 that the Japanese embassy in Paris had a "24-hour hotline for those suffering from severe culture shock", the Japanese embassy stated that such a hotline does not exist. In 2006, Miyuki Kusama, of the Japanese embassy in Paris, told The Guardian that "there are around 20 cases a year of the syndrome and it has been happening for several years", and that the embassy had repatriated at least four Japanese citizens that year. In 2011, the Japanese embassy stated that, despite media reports to the contrary, it did not repatriate Japanese nationals with Paris syndrome.
Susceptibility
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