| The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age Contributor(s): Ehrenberg, Alain (Author) |
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ISBN: 0773546480 ISBN-13: 9780773546486 Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press OUR PRICE: $25.60 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 2016 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Psychology | Psychopathology - Depression - Self-help | Mood Disorders - Depression - Medical | Psychiatry - General |
| Dewey: 616.852 |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 6" W x 8.9" (1.40 lbs) 378 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Ehrenberg, Alain: - Alain Ehrenberg is a sociologist, the director of CESAMES (Research Center on Mental Health, Psychotropics and Society, Paris Descartes University), senior researcher at CNRS, and the author of several books on contemporary individualism. |