The Weariness of the Self

Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age

Alain Ehrenberg

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780773536258
• eBook ISBN: 9780773578708
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology

Depression, once a subfield of neurosis, has become the most diagnosed mental disorder in the world. Why and how has depression become such a topical illness and what does it tell us about changing ideas of the individual and society? Alain Ehrenberg investigates the history of depression and depressive symptoms across twentieth-century psychiatry, showing that identifying depression is far more difficult than a simple diagnostic distinction between normal and pathological sadness - the one constant in the history of depression is its changing definition.

Drawing on the accumulated knowledge of a lifetime devoted to the study of the individual in modern democratic society, Ehrenberg shows that the phenomenon of modern depression is not a construction of the pharmaceutical industry but a pathology arising from inadequacy in a social context where success is attributed to, and expected of, the autonomous individual. In so doing, he provides both a novel and convincing description of the illness that clarifies the intertwining relationship between its diagnostic history and changes in social norms and values.

The first book to offer both a global sociological view of contemporary depression and a detailed description of psychiatric reasoning and its transformation - from the invention of electroshock therapy to mass consumption of Prozac - The Weariness of the Self offers a compelling exploration of depression as social fact.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART ONE A SICK SELF
• PART TWO THE TWILIGHT OF NEUROSIS
• PART THREE THE INADEQUATE INDIVIDUAL
• Conclusion: The Weight of the Possible
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index