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Anxiety

A Short History

Allan V. Horwitz

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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...

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.

Reviews

Reviews

An enlightening tour of anxiety, set at a sensible pace, with an exceptional scholar and writer leading the way.

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.

Horwitz gives us some history and some insights to allay our fears about anxiety. And in helping us to understand anxiety, he opens new doors to coping with it as a chronic condition.

Horwitz... provides a historical account of the universal phenomenon of anxiety in this extremely interesting book... In this expansive treatment (for such a small book), Horwitz reminds readers of the importance of distinguishing between normal and pathological anxiety.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
5.5
x
8.5
Pages
208
ISBN
9781421410807
Table of Contents

Foreword, by Charles E. Rosenberg
Acknowledgments
1. Afraid
2. Classical Anxiety
3. From Medicine to Religion—and Back
4. The Nineteenth Century's New Uncertainties
5. The Freudian Revolution
6. Psychology's

Foreword, by Charles E. Rosenberg
Acknowledgments
1. Afraid
2. Classical Anxiety
3. From Medicine to Religion—and Back
4. The Nineteenth Century's New Uncertainties
5. The Freudian Revolution
6. Psychology's Ascendance
7. The Age of Anxiety
8. The Future of Anxiety
Notes
Index

Author Bio
Allan V. Horwitz
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Allan V. Horwitz

Allan V. Horwitz (PRINCETON, NJ) is the Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University. He is the author of DSM: A History of Psychiatry's Bible, PTSD: A Short History, Anxiety: A Short History, and Creating Mental Illness.