Hard to forget that one. Emotional Component.

"My nearest near-death experience occured in grad school. I'd gathered my nerve and spoken to my advisor about the male domination of academe. 'Women are motes of dust around here.' I hadn't expected this pronouncement to be met with sympathy, but it was. 'I think I'm going to faint,' I said. Was this some kind of joke, the angel-of-desire-poetess swoon? I surprised them by dropping to the floor, deeply unconscious."

(Alice Fulton, Feeling as a Foreign Language, Page 36)

"The articles recommended 'that affected individuals avoid...exposure to abrupt auditory stimuli. This can be accomplished by eliminating alarm clocks, door bells, and phone ringing from the household.' Hank speculated that the phone had startled Laura from a nap; this would explain why it had been found ajar. In Marleen's case, as in mine, the emotional component of the disease was telling. The literature cited instances of children who dropped dead while being scolded in school."

(Alice Fulton, Feeling as a Foreign Language, Page 37-38)