Broadcast: 9 September, 2021

Duration: 1h 3m

 


Why does depressive illness seem so common now? Are there really more depressed people, or are we renaming various forms of personal stress as “depression”? Was the “melancholia” of earlier times a name for depression, or a distinct illness?

How have Freud and his followers understood depression, and how have those ideas changed since Freud’s time? What are the origins of the idea that depression is “chemical,” and why has that idea caused so much controversy? And, what is it like to live not only with depression, but with all these questions so unsettled, and unsettling? These are the questions Jonathan Sadowsky will be exploring in his talk, The Empire of Depression: A New History, based on his new book with the same title.

The Empire of Depression: A New History (2020) is available from the Freud Museum Shop. Worldwide shipping available.

Jonathan Sadowsky is a Professor of the History of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. His interests include the history of madness across cultures, the history of physical treatments for mental illness, and the history of psychoanalysis. His previous books are Imperial Bedlam: Institutions of Madness and Colonialism in Southwest Nigeria and Electroconvulsive Therapy in America: The Anatomy of a Medical Controversy.

 


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The Empire of Depression: A New History – Jonathan Sadowsky

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