From Melancholia to Prozac

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Depression is an experience known to millions. But arguments rage on aspects of its definition and its impact on societies present and past: do drugs work, or are they merely placebos? Is the depression we have today merely a construct of the pharmaceutical industry? Is depression under- or over-diagnosed? Should we be paying for expensive "talking cure" treatments like psychoanalysis or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy? Here, Clark Lawlor argues that understanding the history of depression is important to understanding its present conflicted status and definition. While it is true that our modern understanding of the word "depression" was formed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the condition was originally known as melancholia, and characterised by core symptoms of chronic causeless sadness and fear. Beginning in the Classical period, and moving on to the present, Lawlor shows both continuities and discontinuities in the understanding of what we now call depression, and in the way it has been represented in literature and art. Different cultures defined and constructed melancholy and depression in ways sometimes so different as to be almost unrecognisable. Even the present is still a dynamic history, in the sense that the "new" form of depression, defined in the 1980s and treated by drugs like Prozac, is under attack by many theories that reject the biomedical model and demand a more humanistic idea of depression - one that perhaps returns us to a form of melancholy.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements (p. vii)
• List of Illustrations (p. xi)
• Prologue: Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-84) (p. 1)
• 1 'Poor Wretch' (p. 23)
• 2 Genius and Despair (p. 41)
• 3 From Spleen to Sensibility (p. 73)
• 4 Victorians, Melancholia, and Neurasthenia (p. 101)
• 5 Modernism, Melancholia, and Depression (p. 135)
• 6 The New Depression (p. 157)
• 7 'The Drugs Don't Work'? The Future for Depression and Melancholia (p. 187)
• Glossary (p. 203)
• Notes (p. 209)
• Further Reading (p. 227)
• Bibliography (p. 239)
• Index (p. 253)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

What is depression? Classical writings define depression as a long-term medical illness of sadness caused by an excess of black bile. Renaissance physicians expanded this humoral definition of melancholy to more alchemical terms--an excess of black bile in the body that caused vapors to obscure the brain. By the 19th century, physicians understood melancholy as a nervous disorder associated with depressed nerve force that caused "depressed spirits." The current DSM identifies a spectrum of depressive disorders with competing biological and social causes. But, how did we get here? Lawlor (Northumbria Univ., UK)--who has a particular interest in the cultural history of disease--addresses contemporary questions about the definition, treatment, and causes of depression through a historical discussion of its evolving definitions. He argues that "the depressed patient is not reducible to a biochemically deficient machine, but [is instead] an individual embedded in a complex social environment." Dividing his argument over seven chapters, Lawlor starts in the classical period and goes into the 21st century. He includes a glossary of historical and contemporary terms, a section of suggested reading, and extensive endnotes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals. M. L. Charleroy University of Minnesota