Obsession: A History - Couverture rigide

Davis, Lennard J.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0226137821 ISBN 13 : 9780226137827

Editeur : University of Chicago Press, 2008

Synopsis

We live in an age of obsession. Not only are we hopelessly devoted to our work, strangely addicted to our favorite television shows, and desperately impassioned about our cars, we admire obsession in others: we demand that lovers be infatuated with one another in films, we respond to the passion of single-minded musicians, we cheer on driven athletes. To be obsessive is to be American; to be obsessive is to be modern.

But obsession is not only a phenomenon of modern existence: it is a medical category-both a pathology and a goal. Behind this paradox lies a fascinating history, which Lennard J. Davis tells in Obsession. Beginning with the roots of the disease in demonic possession and its secular successors, Davis traces the evolution of obsessive behavior from a social and religious fact of life into a medical and psychiatric problem. From obsessive aspects of professional specialization to obsessive compulsive disorder and nymphomania, no variety of obsession eludes Davis's graceful analysis.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Lennard J. Davis is professor in the Departments of English, Disability and Human Development, and Medical Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of The Disability Studies Reader, among other books.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Chicago Press
• Date d'édition: 2008
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0226137821
• ISBN 13: 9780226137827
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 296
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Wiley-VCH GmbH; product_safety@wiley.com; ; Boschstrasse 12; Weinheim; 69469; Allemagne