Phobia and American literature, 1705-1937 : a therapeutic history / Don James McLaughlin.
| Author/creator | McLaughlin, Don James author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | Oxford, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025] |
| Description | xvi, 247 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Series | Oxford studies in American literary history Oxford studies in American literary history. ^A1192190 |
| Contents | Introduction: Phobia's metaphor: the therapeutic imagination in American liberalism -- The looking glass of eisoptrophobia: colonial representation and Helmontian hydrotherapy in Cotton Mather and John Adams -- Hydrophobia's doppelgänger: spurious rabies and spontaneous nosology at the dawn of phobia's versatility -- Cauterizing colorphobia: public health print culture in Mary Hayden Pike, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Frederick Douglass -- Before homophobia: Konträre Sexualempfindung and early conversion therapy in Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.'s A Mortal Antipathy -- Monophobia's pluralism: freedoms of expression in William, Henry, and Alice James -- The dirt on pysophobia: micro-contaminations in Mark Twain's Three Thousand Years among the Microbes and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Are Watching God -- Epilogue: Allegories of phagophobia. |
| Abstract | "Phobia and American Literature recovers a two-century history of phobia as a medical, political, and aesthetic concept from the late colonial period to the Harlem Renaissance. Scholars have presumed that phobia's diagnosis first gathered momentum with the coinage of agoraphobia in the last third of the nineteenth century and became established with the rise of psychoanalysis and behaviorism. This narrative has eclipsed a deeper genealogy. Tracing phobia's emergence as a variable suffix, inclined to become attached to diverse objects, situations, and ideas, the book tells a neglected story of phobia's rise as a familiar psychological state. Focusing on conversations between writers and physicians concentrated in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, it shows how this interdisciplinary dialogue helped lay the foundation for therapeutic modes of understanding and addressing social discrimination. As medical interest in the role of textuality in mental health infused literature with awareness of its salutary capacities, American writers worked to harness the influence of the written word on readers' psychophysiological wellbeing"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN | 9780198945987 |
| ISBN | 0198945981 |
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