Idioms of Distress: Psychosomatic Disorders in Medical and Imaginative LiteratureThis interdisciplinary study examines the enigmatic category of psychosomatic disorders as articulated in medical writings and represented in literary works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Six key works are analyzed: Hawthorne s The Scarlet Letter, Émile Zola s Thérèse Raquin, Thomas Mann s Buddenbrooks, Arthur Miller s Broken Glass, Brian O Doherty s The Strange Case of Mademoiselle P., and Pat Barker s Regeneration. Each is a case study in detection as the hidden sources of bodily ills are uncovered in intra- or interpersonal conflicts such as guilt, family tensions, and marital discord. The book fosters a better understanding of these puzzling disorders by revealing how they function simultaneously as masks and as manifestations of inner suffering. |
Contents
Speaking through the Body | 3 |
Swings of the Historical Pendulum | 19 |
The Mysterious Leap | 37 |
Literary Patients | 53 |
Metaphors of Distress | 71 |
A Strange Sympathy betwixt Soul and Body Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter 1850 | 73 |
Nerves At the Interstices of Physiology and Psychology Emile Zola Therese Raquin 1867 | 93 |
A Sick Spot on the Body of the Family Thomas Mann Buddenbrooks 1990 | 111 |
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Common terms and phrases
Alexander Barbour behavior biopsychosocial model blindness bodily brain Broken Glass Buddenbrooks characters Chillingworth chosomatic Christian clinical conflicts context conversion disorder Craiglockhart death diagnosis Dimmesdale Dimmesdale's disease disturbances doctor dream DSM-III DSM-IV emotional Engel environment etiology experience eyes factors feelings Freud function Gellburgs Gesammelte Werke Glover heart Hester humoral medicine Hyman Hysteria idioms of distress illness Lipowski literary patients Mademoiselle manifest Marie-Therese marriage means mental Mesmer metaphoric mind and body mind-body Mysterious Leap narrative narratology narrator nerves nervous ness neurasthenia neurosis nineteenth century novel organic pain person Phillip physician physiological play problem psyche Psychiatry psychoanalysis psychological psychosomatic disorders Psychosomatic Medicine PTSD Puritan readers Regeneration repression Reprint Rivers Rivers's role Sassoon Scarlet Letter secret sexual shadow shell shock silence social somatic disorders somatoform disorders speak Strange stress Sylvia Sylvia's paralysis talk Thérèse and Laurent Thérèse Raquin Thomas tion trauma Tuke unconscious word York Zola Zola's