Anxiety: A Short History

209 Pages·2013·1.285 MB·English

by  Allan V Horwitz

ANXIETY
JOHNS HOPKINS BIOGRAPHIES OF DISEASE
Charles E. Rosenberg, Series Editor
Randall M. Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease:
A Short History of Malaria
Steven J. Peitzman, Dropsy, Dialysis, Transplant:
A Short History of Failing Kidneys
David Healy, Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder
Susan D. Jones, Death in a Small Package:
A Short History of Anthrax
Allan V. Horwitz, Anxiety:A Short History
Anxiety
F F F
A Short History
Allan V. Horwitz
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
©2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2013
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Horwitz, Allan V.
Anxiety : a short history / Allan V. Horwitz.
p. ; cm. — (Johns Hopkins biographies of disease)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13:978-1-4214-1080-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10:1-4214-1080-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-13:978-1-4214-1081-4 (electronic)
ISBN-10:1-4214-1081-8 (electronic)
I. Title. II. Series: Johns Hopkins biographies of disease.
[DNLM:1. Anxiety Disorders—history. 2. Anxiety—history. WM 11.1]
RC531
616.85'22—dc23
2013003541
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
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To Jane
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CONTENTS
Foreword, by Charles E. Rosenberg ix
Acknowledgments xv
Chapter1. Afraid 1
Chapter2. Classical Anxiety 19
Chapter3. From Medicine to Religion—and
Back 36
Chapter4. The Nineteenth Century’s New
Uncertainties 56
Chapter5. The Freudian Revolution 75
Chapter6. Psychology’s Ascendance 98
Chapter7. The Age of Anxiety 118
Chapter8. The Future of Anxiety 143
Notes 163
Index 185
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FOREWORD
Disease is a fundamental aspect of the human condition. Ancient
bones tell us that pathological processes are older than human-
kind’s written records, and sickness and death still confound us.
We have not banished pain, disability, or the fear of death, even
though we now die on average at older ages, of chronic more of-
ten than acute ills, and in hospital or hospice beds and not in
our own homes. Disease is something men and women feel. It is
experienced in our bodies—but also in our minds and emotions.
It can bring pain and incapacity and hinder us at work and in
meeting family responsibilities. Disease demands explanation; we
think about it and we think with it. Why have I become ill? And
why now? How is my body different in sickness from its quiet and
unobtrusive functioning in health? Why in times of epidemic has
a community been scourged?
Answers to such timeless questions necessarily mirror and in-
corporate time- and place-specific ideas, social assumptions, and
technological options. In this sense, disease has always been a so-
cial and linguistic, a cultural as well as biological, entity. In the
Hippocratic era more than two thousand years ago, physicians
(we have always had them with us) were limited to the evidence
of their senses in diagnosing a fever, an abnormal discharge, or
seizure. Their notions of the material basis for such felt and visible
symptoms necessarily reflected and incorporated contemporary
philosophical and physiological notions, a speculative world of
disordered humors, “breath,” and pathogenic local environments.
Today we can call upon a rather different variety of scientific un-
derstandings and an armory of diagnostic practices—tools that
allow us to diagnose ailments unfelt by patients and imperceptible
to the doctor’s unaided senses. In the past century disease has also
ix