Dr Samuel Frye (Michael Maloney) is unhappy with his job. He can no longer face the reality of psychiatry, in which chemicals are used to juggle people’s brain until everyone seems satisfied. He kidnaps the pretty Veronica Bloom (Emmanuelle Vaugier), who suffers an acute form of the Multiple Personality Syndrome. Frye flees to the institute that his former mentor set up abroad when he too had to leave the country. This eccentric and prominent psychiatrist Dr Harvey Langston (Patrick McGoohan) has developed a method to bring people closer together: he links people telepathically and hence eliminates all the individual feeling and behaviour. The communal brain is a river from which anyone can draw water. When Frye arrives, he is forced to cooperate on Langston’s tests and infects the group brain with paranoia, lust and jealousy. The guinea pigs lose all control in the orgy of terror and sexual obsessions.The psychological science-fiction thriller Hysteria soon develops into a twisted love story à la Cyrano de Bergerac. The group brain is a roulette of changing identities. Frye is startled to find out that he is not just in love with Veronica, but with all the men and women who form part of the brain and who realise their dreams through the beautiful woman.
