HERE ARE SOME FOLKS WHO WERE NEVER FORCED TO WATCH THE RED BALLOON:

'Paris Syndrome' leaves tourists in shock: Japanese visitors found to suffer from psychiatric phenomenon (Reuters, 10/23/06)

Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

"A third of patients get better immediately, a third suffer relapses and the rest have psychoses," Yousef Mahmoudia, a psychologist at the Hotel-Dieu hospital, next to Notre Dame cathedral, told the newspaper Journal du Dimanche. [...]

"Fragile travelers can lose their bearings. When the idea they have of the country meets the reality of what they discover it can provoke a crisis," psychologist Herve Benhamou told the paper.

The phenomenon, which the newspaper dubbed "Paris Syndrome", was first detailed in the psychiatric journal Nervure in 2004.

A psychosis caused by an inability to reconcile the rhetoric and the reality would explain the French.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 24, 2006 3:37 PM