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The Empire of Depression
A New History
Jonathan Sadowsky (Author)
9781509531653, Polity Press
Paperback / softback, published 1 September 2023
256 pages
22.4 x 14.7 x 1.5 cm, 0.386 kg
"Drawing from literature, medicine, psychology, anthropology, and memoir, Jonathan Sadowsky shows how much the history of depression informs our present understanding of it. This is an immensely readable book which challenges dogmatic opinions about a complex condition which may be 'hard to manualize' but, sadly, is also too often politicized." "Sadowsky deftly guides the reader across history and continents in search of depression's past, present, and future. Engagingly written, measured in tone, and nuanced in its conclusions, The Empire of Depression never loses sight of the human suffering at the heart of its subject." "fascinating." "a wise and discerning work." "What would an updated Anatomy of Melancholy look like? Perhaps something like Jonathan Sadowsky's The Empire of Depression.... Though neither a Galenist nor an Anglican priest, Sadowsky reminds one in many ways of Burton: wry, practical, humane...." "With humour and personal reflexivity, Sadowsky unravels the history of depression in a comprehensive synthesis of a staggering range of sources, weaving classical, medical and academic literature with the tragic stories of prominent people such as artist, Mark Rothko and writer, Sylvia Plath."
—Linda Gask, writer and psychiatrist
—Greg Eghigian, editor of The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health
—New Statesman
—Shepherd Express
—Gregory Hayes, New York Review of Books
—Jacqueline Leckie, Health and History
Depression has colonized the world. Today, more than 300 million of us have been diagnosed as depressed. But 150 years ago, "depression" referred to a mood, not a sickness. Does that mean people weren't sick before, only sad? Of course not. Mental illness is a complex thing, part biological, part social, its definition dependent on time and place. But in the mid-twentieth century, even as European empires were crumbling, new Western clinical models and treatments for mental health spread across the world. In so doing, "depression" began to displace older ideas like "melancholia," the Japanese "utsushô," or the Punjabi "sinking heart" syndrome. Award-winning historian Jonathan Sadowsky tells this global story, chronicling the path-breaking work of psychiatrists and pharmacists, and the intimate sufferings of patients. Revealing the continuity of human distress across time and place, he shows us how different cultures have experienced intense mental anguish, and how they have tried to alleviate it.
Preface 10 Acknowledgments 19 1 Depression is a Thing 23 2 Too Dry and too Cold 52 3 Turned Inward 79 4 A Diagnosis in Ascent 108 5 "Just Chemical" 152 6 Darkness Legible 187 Epilogue: Depression's Past and Future 216 Note on the Historiography 221 Partial Bibliography 226 Index 232
Subject Areas: Psychology [JM]
