Anxiety
A Short History
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- $30.99
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- $30.99
Publisher Description
Fears, phobias, neuroses, and anxiety disorders from ancient times to the present.
More people today report feeling anxious than ever before—even while living in relatively safe and prosperous modern societies. Almost one in five people experiences an anxiety disorder each year, and more than a quarter of the population admits to an anxiety condition at some point in their lives. Here Allan V. Horwitz, a sociologist of mental illness and mental health, narrates how this condition has been experienced, understood, and treated through the ages—from Hippocrates, through Freud, to today.
Anxiety is rooted in an ancient part of the brain, and our ability to be anxious is inherited from species far more ancient than humans. Anxiety is often adaptive: it enables us to respond to threats. But when normal fear yields to what psychiatry categorizes as anxiety disorders, it becomes maladaptive. As Horwitz explores the history and multiple identities of anxiety—melancholia, nerves, neuroses, phobias, and so on—it becomes clear that every age has had its own anxieties and that culture plays a role in shaping how anxiety is expressed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Anxiety is particular among most mental disorders in that it exists both pathologically and colloquially: to be "anxious" can connote a psychological condition, but it can also refer to a more commonly emotional or situational state. Both definitions are dealt with in this broad history of anxiety. Rutgers sociology professor Horwitz largely shies away from modern tendencies toward biological explanation and treatment, instead covering the sociocultural aspects of anxiety's past, present, and future. He begins in the classical period with Hippocrates and proceeds up to the present. Almost an entire chapter is devoted to the rise of Freud in the 20th century, when the modern definition of anxiety developed. In these respects, the book might not differ from histories of other illnesses. However, Horwitz's priorities lay less in innovation than in clear, readable organization: each short chapter is punctuated with a concise summary; all of this is wrapped up with a timely conclusion, wherein Horwitz argues for the necessity of balancing neuroscientific advances with the disease's complex history in creating diagnostic criteria for anxiety. What is fascinating about this book is less the facts it presents than its ambiguities: anxiety will always force us to question the lines between the normal and the disordered, nervousness and depression, fears and pathologies.
