Engendering a therapeutic ethos: Modernity, masculinity & nervousness

Journal of Historical Sociology

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 84-107

  Wright, Katie ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61849178815     PISSN: 09521909     EISSN: 14676443     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6443.2009.01343.x     Document Type: Article

References (130)

1. James Smith Esq., The Nervous System: Its Use and Abuse. Melbourne: Mason, Firth & McCutcheon General Printers, 1881.
2. Ibid., pp. 3-4.
3. Concern about the increasing prevalence of nervous disorder was commonly canvassed in Australian medical journals during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See too Stephen Garton, Medicine and Madness: A Social History of Insanity in New South Wales 1880-1940, Kensington: NSW University Press, 1988;
4. David Walker, "Modern Nerves, Nervous Moderns: Notes on Male Neurasthenia", Australian Cultural History, 6, 1987, pp. 49-63.
5. Smith, The Nervous System, p. 4.
6. Ibid., pp. 13-16. See also James Smith, "Worry as a Factor in Disease", Victorian Review, June, 1880.
7. See Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud, New York: Harper and Row, 1966;
8. Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York and London: WW Norton, 1979;
9. Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkley: University of California Press, 1985;
10. Dana Cloud, Control and Consolation in American Culture and Politics: Rhetoric of Therapy. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage 1998;
11. Eva Moskowitz, In Therapy We Trust: America's Obsession with Self-Fulfilment Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001;
12. Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. London: Routledge, 2004.
13. I draw on the work of R.W. Connell in referring to hegemonic masculinity as a culturally constructed ideal of manliness, Masculinities, St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1995.
14. See also, Martin Crotty, Making the Australian Male: Middle-Class Masculinity 1870-1920. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001.
15. Janet Oppenheim, Shattered Nerves: Doctors, Patients, and Depression in Victorian England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
16. My methodological framework draws on genealogical approaches to the "history of the present" and especially the resurrection of subjugated historical knowledges. See Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History", in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
17. Theoretically, my work is informed by cultural sociological approaches which recognize the significance of "meaning-making". See Lyn Spillman (ed.) Cultural Sociology, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.
18. The "problem of nerves", I am suggesting, contributed to the destabilization of selfhood and gender relations, processes already underway due to the major social changes of the decades around the turn of the century and then intensified by the First World War and its aftermath. In particular, the trauma associated with "shell shock" was instrumental to a changing orientation to personal suffering and culminated in new therapeutic ways of thinking about the individual. The experiences of men returning from war also had a significant impact on families and the wider community, rendering accepted British patterns of stoicism in the face of emotional suffering more difficult to sustain, and prompting radical shifts in medical theory and practice regarding treatment and the possibility of cure.
19. Kerreen Reiger, The Disenchantment of the Home: Modernizing the Australian Family 1880-1940. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985;
20. Katie Spearritt, "New Dawns: First Wave Feminism 1880-1914", in K. Saunders and R. Evans (eds.), Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and Negotiation Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992, p. 226;
21. Michael Gilding, The Making and Breaking of the Australian Family. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991.
22. George Beard, "Neurasthenia, or Nervous Exhaustion", Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 3, 1869, pp. 217-221.
23. Id., American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences. New York: Putnam's Sons, 1881.
24. Ibid., p. 96.
25. F. G. Gosling, Before Freud: Neurasthenia and the American Medical Community, 1870-1910. Chicago: University of nimios Press, 1987, p. x.
26. Ibid., p. 9.
27. It has been argued that neurasthenia was to the late nineteenth century what ailments of the liver were to the eighteenth century: a fashionable "disease" to which the cultured elite were especially vulnerable. See Dona Davis, "George Beard and Lydia Pinkham: Gender, Class, and Nerves in Late 19th Century America", in D. Davis and S. Low (eds.), Gender, Health and Illness: the Case of Nerves. Hemisphere Publishing Co.: New York, 1989, pp. 1-22;
28. Ann Douglas Wood, The Fashionable Diseases': Women's Complaints and their Treatment in Nineteenth Century America, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1973, Vol IV, 1, pp. 25-52.
29. David Schuster, "Neurasthenia and a Modernizing America", Journal of the American Medical Association 290, 2003, pp. 2327-2328
30. and "Personalizing Illness and Modernity: S. Weir Mitchell, Literary Women and Neurasthenia, 1870-1914", Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 79, 4, 2005, pp. 695-722.
31. Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology. London: Routledge, [1897] 1951, p. 181.
32. There was considerable interest in problems of nervousness around this time. German sociologist, Georg Simmel, reflected medical opinion and social thought of the day in his view the stimulation of the city strained the nervous system, see "The Metropolis and Mental Life", in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, New York: Free Press, [1903] 1950, pp. 409-424.
33. Freud, by contrast, regarded the excessive stimulation of the nervous system as a sexual problem, asserting in "The Aetiology of the Neuroses" "that neurasthenia is always only a sexual neurosis". He understood neurasthenia as essentially a male malady caused by masturbation. In women, he believed neurasthenia was "derived from neurasthenia in a man", see Freud's letter to Wilhelm Fliess, "The Aetiology of the Neuroses" in Peter Gay (ed.), The Freud Reader. London: Vintage, [1893] 1996, pp. 56-60.
34. There were, nonetheless, important differences in perceived aetiology and prevalence. For an overview of the British and continental European context, see Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Roy Porter (eds.) Cultures of Neurasthenia from Beard to the First World War. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2001;
35. for America see Gosling, Before Freud.
36. David Walker, "Modern Nerves, Nervous Moderns".
37. Roy Porter, "Nervousness, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Style" in M. Gijswijt-Hofstra, and R. Porter (eds.) Cultures of Neurasthenia from Beard to the First World War. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2001, p. 40.
38. Oppenheim, Shattered Nerves, p. 100.
39. Beard, American Nervousness p. 8.
40. V. Marano, "On Neurasthenia", The Australasian Medical Gazette, Vol. X, October, 1890, p. 21.
41. T. C. Allbutt, "Neurasthenia", The Australasian Medical Gazette, Vol. XXXI, 1912, p. 149.
42. As noted by Matthew Thomson, "Neurasthenia in Britain: An Overview, in Gijswijt-Hofstra and Porter, Cultures of Neurasthenia, p. 81.
43. Marano, "On Neurasthenia", p. 23.
44. For an analysis of the neurasthenia and its "psychological reincarnation", see Ruth Taylor "The Death of Neurasthenia and its Psychological Reincarnation", British Journal of Psychiatry, 179, 2001, pp. 550-557. Taylor notes that, "particularly striking are its abrupt appearance in 1886 and equally sudden disappearance after 1930. This type of pattern might fit with a disease of infectious origin during an epidemic", p. 555.
45. J. Montgomery Mosher, "The Treatment of Mental Disease in the Early Stage", The Australasian Medical Gazette, XXXI, 1912, p. 154.
46. See for example, J.V. McAree's discussion of Freud and use of Freudian terms, "Notes on Applied Psychology and Suggestive Therapeutics" The Medical Journal of Australia, April 1920, pp. 355-361
47. (and correspondence pages) and "Notes on Psycho-therapeutic Practice", The Medical Journal of Australia, May 1923, pp. 543-547.
48. David Walker, "Continence for a Nation: Seminal Loss and National Vigour", Labour History, 48, 1985, pp. 1-14;
49. Robert Darby, "Acton's Antipodean Disciples: A Colonial Perspective on His Theories of Male Sexual (Dys)function", Journal of the History of Sexuality, 13, 2, 2004, pp. 157-182.
50. Ibid.
51. Walker, 'Continence for a Nation, p. 3.
52. Ibid., pp. 3-6;
53. Darby, "Acton's Antipodean Disciples", p. 164;
54. For the Australian context in relation to views about the relationship between masturbation and insanity see Garton, Medicine and Madness, p. 100;
55. for spermatorrhoea see Darby, "Acton's Antipodean Disciples", p. 165;
56. for neurasthenia see Walker, "Modern Nerves, Nervous Moderns".
57. Marano, "On Neurasthenia", p. 22.
58. Walker, "Continence for a Nation", p. 13.
59. John W. Springthorpe, "On the Psychological Aspects of Sexual Appetite", The Australasian Medical Gazette, 4, October, 1884, p. 11.
60. Ibid., p. 9.
61. Ibid., p. 12.
62. There was, therefore, an historical dimension to the perceived problem of male sexuality that fed these fears. While there was variation between states, Carmichael notes that patterns of immigration saw men outnumber women to a ratio of roughly three to one until around 1830, and that the gender imbalanced continued into the twentieth century. See Gordon Carmichael, "So Many Children: Colonial and Post-Colonial Demographic Patterns" in K. Saunders and R. Evans (eds.), Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and Negotiation. Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992, pp. 103-143.
63. Allbutt, "Neurasthenia", p. 151.
64. Walker, "Modern Nerves, Nervous Moderns", p. 58.
65. The advertisements described here appeared regularly appeared in The Bulletin during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
66. See, for example, The Bulletin, 20 February, 1892.
67. Ibid., 27 February, 1892.
68. The Bulletin 27 Feb 1892; 14 Sep 1896.
69. Philippa Martyr, Paradise of Quacks: An Alternative History of Medicine in Australia. Macleay Press: Sydney, 2002, p. 100.
70. For examples of medical accounts of the use of electricity for nervous disorder see, Marano, "On Neurasthenia"; W.H. O'Neill, "An Interesting Case of Nervous Disease Greatly Improved by a Novel Application of Faradic Electricity", The Australasian Medical Gazette, July, 1892, pp. 269-271;
71. G. E. Rennie, "Some Points in the Treatment of Chronic Nerve Disease". The Australasian Medical Gazette, August, 1905, pp. 359-363.
72. The Bulletin, 9 April 1892.
73. For an overview of the use of electrotherapy in Australia see Martyr, Paradise of Quacks, pp. 154-157.
74. The Bulletin, 8 November, 1917.
75. Walker argues that "Beard democratized nervous disorders, making them an inevitable consequence of modernity", p. 56.
76. Ibid, p. 52.
77. For examples see, The Bulletin, 26 April 1902; 25 October 1917.
78. Davis, "George Beard and Lydia Pinkham".
79. Ibid., p. 108.
80. See, for example, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 March 1947.
81. Ibid., 15 March, 1947.
82. For examples, see The Bulletin, The Sydney Morning Herald the Australian Women's Weekly, especially during the 1930s-50s.
83. This was especially true for middle-class men. See Oppenheim, Shattered Nerves, p. 144 and p. 65;
84. Mark Micale, "Hysteria Male/Hysteria Female: Reflections of Comparative Gender Construction in Nineteenth Century France and Britain", in M. Benjamin (ed.), Science and Sensibility: Gender and Scientific Enquiry, 1780-1945. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 200-239;
85. Elaine Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, pp. 62-77.
86. Stephen Garton, "Freud versus the Rat: Understanding Shell Shock in World War I", Australian Cultural History, 16, 1997/8, p. 48.
87. See also Joy Damousi, Fneud in the Antipodes: A Cultural Analysis History of Psychoanalysis in Australia. University of New South Wales Press: Sydney, 2005.
88. Editorial, "Neuroses and Psychoses", The Medical Journal of Australia, August, 1918, p. 94.
89. Editorial, "War and What It Means", The Medical Journal of Australia, July 1917, p. 55.
90. Michael Tyquin, Madness and the Military: Australia's Experience of the Great War. Loftus: Australian Military History Publications, 2006.
91. Garton, "Freud versus the Rat", p. 49.
92. Walter Summons, "Medical Work Seen in the Australian Military Hospitals", The Medical Journal of Australia, September, 1917, p. 244.
93. E.T.C. Milligan, "Medical Experience in the War Zone", The Medical Journal of Australia, March, 1917, p. 203.
94. A. Jefferis Turner, "Medical Gleanings in War Time", The Medical Journal of Australia, September, 1919, p. 294.
95. Springthorpe, wrote "The neuromimetic (badly called hysteric) - with dominant ideas, producible and removable by suggestion", "War Neuroses and Civil Practice", The Medical Journal of Australia, October, 1919, p. 281.
96. Garton, "Freud versus the Rat", p. 49.
97. For a discussion on shell shock and the evolution of "post-traumatic stress disorder", see Berthold Gersons and Ingrid Carlier, "Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: the History of a Recent Concept", British Journal of Psychiatry, 161, 1992, pp. 742-748.
98. Damousi, Freud in the Antipodes;
99. See also Dean Rapp, "The Early Discovery of Freud by the British General Educated Public, 1912-1919", Social History of Medicine, 3, 1990, pp. 217-243.
100. For the Australian context, see especially Damousi, Freud in the Antipodes; and Garton, "Freud versus the Rat".
101. Ibid.
102. Reviews in The Medical Journal of Australia were generally favourable to texts on suggestion, and conversely rather scathing on psychoanalysis.
103. See Springthorpe, "War Neuroses and Civil Practice".
104. A.C. Fraser, "Notes on Three Cases of Functional Diseases of the Nervous System Seen During the Voyage from England to Australia," The Medical Journal of Australia, November, 1919, p. 436.
105. Garton, "Freud and the Rat".
106. Neve, "Public Views of Neurasthenia", pp. 142.
107. See for example, "Review of GC Jung 'Collected Papers on Analytic Psychology' ", The Medical Journal of Australia, February, 1918, p. 150.
108. 'Review of Rogues de Fursac's 1916 "Manual of Psychiatry", The Medical Journal of Australia, 1917, p. 27.
109. Springthorpe, "War Neuroses and Civil Practice", p. 280.
110. Ibid.
111. For example see review, "Manual of Psychiatry", The Medical Journal of Australia, July 1917, p. 27;
112. contrast with "Studies in Psychoanalysis", The Medical Journal of Australia, May 1924, p. 516.
113. M. C. Lidwell, "Some Notes on the Diagnosis and Treatment of the Neuroses", The Medical Journal of Australia, January 20, 1923, p. 57.
114. Ibid., p. 59.
115. McAree, "Notes on Applied Psychology", pp. 355-361.
116. John W. Springthorpe, "Psychology: Its Basis and Application", The Medical Journal of Australia, October, 1922, p. 461.
117. See Peter Shea, Defining Madness. Leichhardt: Federation Press, 1999.
118. By the late nineteenth century, a growing number of physicians campaigned for "lunacy reform". By the early twentieth century, this lobby included prominent physicians advocating the benefits of early treatment. In 1908 Andrew Davidson, Medical Superintendent of the Callan Park Hospital for the Insane in Sydney, for example, called for the establishment of out-patient clinics, arguing that "the management of the early stage of mental disease is one of the greatest public importance", "Mental Diseases from a Sociological Point of View." The Australasian Medical Gazette XXVII, September, 1908, 456.
119. At the 1911 Australasian Medical Congress, W. Beattie Smith expressed a similar position, arguing that "it is with the beginnings of mental disorder that we hope for victory", Smith, "The Address in Neurology and Psychiatry", The Australasian Medical Gazette, XXX, 1911, p. 562.
120. John Cawte, The Last of the Lunatics. Melbourne University Press: Carlton, 1998;
121. Milton Lewis, Managing Madness: Psychiatry And Society In Australia 1788-1980. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1988.
122. Garton, Medicine and Madness, p. 92.
123. Mark Finnane, "From Dangerous Lunatic to Human Rights? The Law and Mental Illness in Australian History" in C. Colborne and D. MacKinnon (eds.) "Madness" in Australia: Histories, Heritage and the Asylum. University of Queensland Press: St Lucia, 2003.
124. Until the 1930s, voluntary admission to asylums was restricted by legislation, although this was a practice that did occur.
125. Influential cultural analyses include those of Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic;
126. Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism; Bellah et al. Habits of the Heart.
127. Post-Foucauldian readings in particular, see Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: the Shaping of the Private Self, London: Routledge, 1990.
128. James Nolan, The Therapeutic State: Justifying Government at Century's End New York: New York University Press, 1998.
129. Katie Wright, "Theorizing Therapeutic Culture: Past Influences, Future Directions", Journal of Sociology, 44, 4, 2008, pp. 321-336;
130. Julie McLeod and Katie Wright, "The Talking Cure in Everyday Life: Gender, Generations and Friendship", Sociology, 43, 1, 2009, pp. 122-139.