Moody minds distempered : essays on melancholy and depression

209 Pages·2009·0.783 MB·English

by  Radden, Jennifer

Moody Minds Distempered
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Moody Minds Distempered
Essays on Melancholy and Depression
JENNIFER RADDEN
1
2009
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Radden, Jennifer.
Moody minds distempered : essays on melancholy and depression / Jennifer Radden.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-19-533828-7
1. Melancholy. 2. Depression, Mental. I. Title.
[DNLM:1. Depression—Collected Works. 2. Depressive Disorder—
Collected Works. 3. Affect—Collected Works. 4. Depression—history—
Collected Works. 5. Depressive Disorder—history—Collected Works.
6. Philosophy, Medical—Collected Works. WM 171 R125m2009]
BF575.M44R33 2009
128'.37—dc22 2008014454
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Dedicated to the memory of my father
William Whayman Leavett Radden
1900 1970
–
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acknowledgments
Almost an adult lifetime of work is represented in these pages: there is no way I can
do justice to the assistance I have received—from my own teachers, from profes-
sional colleagues and friends in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and from
my valued students at the University of Massachusetts. I am grateful to every one of
them, aware that without their knowledge, insights, ideas, encouragement and sup-
port, this book would not have been possible.
More specifi cally and more recently, I thank Peter Ohlin at Oxford University
Press for his astuteness over, and enthusiasm for, this project. And incisive assistance
from my friends in PHAEDRA also needs to be acknowledged: Jane Roland Martin,
Janet Farrell Smith, Ann Diller, Beatrice Kipp Nelson, Susan Douglas Fransoza
and Barbara Houston. In addition, Joan Fordyce, Gerrit Glas, James Phillips, Alec
Bodkin, Jeff Poland, Suzanne Phillips, John Sadler, Amélie Rorty, David Brendel,
Rachel Cooper, Chris Megone, Stephen Wilkinson, Marlies ter Borg, Louis
Charland, Peter Kramer and David Healy have all helped me better understand
melancholy, depression and the category of disorder; and the ideas on emotional
pain were clarifi ed by Murat Aydede and Larry Kaye.
My debt to libraries and librarians is also great: in particular, I want to thank
librarians at the Healey Library in Boston, the Bodleian at Oxford, and Wellcome
Institute in London. The Boston Athenaeum has provided an unmatched setting for
thinking and writing.
The idea for this volume came while I was on sabbatical leave in 2006, and
I thank the University of Massachusetts Boston for releasing me, and Oxford’s
University College, Corpus Christi College and Merton College for receiving me - on
the H.L.A. Hart Fellowship that allowed me to bring my plan into manageable shape.
To the Warden of Merton College, Dame Jessica Rawson, and the Merton College
viii Acknowledgments
Fellows, I am especially grateful. Untold comforts and luxuries— intellectual, crea-
ture, and social—were afforded me during that Michaelmas term as a Visiting
Research Fellow at Merton.
My fi nal and special acknowledgment goes to my husband Frank Keefe, who
has seen me through, unwavering, during the year and a half the book has taken to
ready for press.
contents
3
Introduction
part i
History: Intellectual and Medical History of
27
Melancholy and Depression
1
. Melancholia in the Writing of a Sixteenth-
29
Century Spanish Nun
2 37
. Melancholy: History of a Concept
3 58
. Melancholy and Melancholia
part ii
Categories: Melancholy and Depression as
73
Medical, Psychological, and Moral Concepts
4
. Is this Dame Melancholy? Equating Today’s
75
Depression and Past Melancholia
5 94
. The Psychiatry of Cross-Cultural Suffering
6 97
. Epidemic Depression and Burtonian Melancholy