These words refer to extreme states of mental agitation, craving, disorder or abnormality. Frenzy is the most general of these in stressing extreme agitation of any sort for whatever reason: in a frenzy to meet his deadline. Usually, the word suggests an actual acting out of the mental state in rapid but possibly disordered movements: the frenzy with which they struggled to put out the fire raging through the building. Also, the word suggests a given spurt of seizure of emotion that goads one into action, rather than a steady or constant state: the frenzy of activity during harvest time. When the word refers to emotional imbalance rather than hyperbolically indicating frantic effort, the emotions suggested include hate, anger, terror or other negative responses to externals: driven by a cold frenzy to kill his opponent. Mania in one of its particulars contrasts strongly with this suggestion of negative response in frenzy , since it can refer to an extreme liking or craving for something: a mania for collecting rare books. Furthermore, a mania may be present over a long period of time without necessarily being acted out: never having indulged his secret mania for camping outdoors. In a psychiatric context, the word is used more strictly to refer to a mental disorder in which one is pervaded with a sense of well-being but acts in excessive and deranged ways: the mania that alternates with melancholy in the typical manic-depressive.

Where frenzy may suggest angry outbursts and mania a continual craving, hysteria suggests emotional seizures of grief or fear as expressed by uncontrolled sobbing: the hysteria of many aboard the sinking ship. Uncontrolled laughter is also a possible result of hysteria , although such laughter would hardly stem from even an illusory happiness. Psychiatrically, the word refers to an abnormal condition resulting from nervous malfunction or sexual repression and characterized by violent emotional paroxysms and disturbances in the sensory and motor functions: the crippled woman whose classic case of hysteria set Freud to devising his psychoanalytic theories.

Delirium indicates a deranged state that may be the by-product of fever, epilepsy or alcoholism, or the primary effect of narcotic or psychedelic drugs. The word may suggest agitation like frenzy , but it does not necessarily suggest any physical activity whatsoever; it does indicate a rambling or hallucinating mind: a delirium in which he thought he had stepped out of his body and looked back on it. More loosely, the word can refer to any feverish state or nightmare-ridden sleep: a delirium of troubled dreams from which he woke in a cold sweat. Hyperbolically, delirium is sometimes used to indicate uncontrollable excitement, wild emotion or frenzied rapture: a delirium of joy.