Obsession: A History

by Lennard J. Davis

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226137797
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	05/15/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Obsession in Our Time

1    Origins of Obsession          
2    The Emergence of Obsession         
3    Specialization as Monomania         
4    Never Done: Compulsive Writing, Graphomania, Bibliomania         
5    Freud and Obsession as the Gateway to Psychoanalysis     
6    Obsessive Sex and Love    
7    Obsession and Visual Art   
8    OCD: Now and Forever    

Conclusion: So What? So What? So What? So What? and Other Obsessive Thoughts       
Acknowledgments 
Notes        
Index         

Editorial Reviews

Distracting obsessive-compulsive behaviors are bad, but a lover's or artist's obsession is revered in contemporary society. How did we achieve this split in our review of obsession? In this sometimes humorous but often pedantic survey, Davis (My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood with Deafness) explores how, in the mid-18th century, obsession went from being seen as possession by demons to a nervous disorder, an increasingly medicalized view. By the late-20th century, researchers used brain scans and other medical technology in an attempt to discover why one in every 10 persons is diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Davis contends that obsession arises from a constellation of biological and cultural forces. Throughout his study, he offers compelling examples of his thesis through close readings of novels such as William Godwin's Caleb Williams, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Emile Zola's The Masterpiece, among others, as the fictional expressions of their authors' obsessions with certain cultural ideas. Davis acknowledges but dismisses the charge that he uses the word "obsession" loosely, and his academic approach limits the book's audience. 17 b&w illus. (Nov.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Modern society both needs and fears obsessiveness. Olympian athletes, concert soloists, and novelists have to be obsessed, yet the admired qualities that undergird their excellence also cause suffering and can lead to psychiatric diagnosis. Davis (English, disability & human development, & medical education, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago; My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood with Deafness ) begins with a gripping story of his own boyhood compulsions. Taking examples from literature, history, art, and medicine, he shows how society both aggravates and aggrandizes obsessiveness, notably in sex education, science, and psychoanalysis. Francis Galton, Charles Dickens, Sigmund Freud, Marie Stopes, and others populate a "biocultural narrative" that Davis introduces to penetrate walls of isolation between historical context and the latest fads and between categorical disease and the experience of illness. Profound, brilliant, and engaging, the book deplores the separation of medicine and psychology from their historical and social contexts. Demonstrating a narrative approach, Davis breaks the quarantine that isolates the obsessive person from obsessive society and rightly recommends a good dose of interdisciplinary medical history. Highly recommended; essential for most libraries.-E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC

Library Journal

Erudite, sometimes overly dense exploration of "the history of a disorder that was often considered a disease."Actually, the word obsession was used in its earliest Latin incarnation to characterize the success of a siege, asserts Davis (English, Disability and Human Development, and Medical Education/Univ. of Illinois, Chicago; My Sense of Silence, 2000, etc.). To possess a city was to have invaded it thoroughly, inside and out. To obsess a city was merely to surround it, with the citadel remaining intact. Later, these paired words came to refer to a soul's assault by the devil: When one was obsessed, the demon had incomplete control and the person remained aware of their abnormal state. Still later, obsession came to occupy a place in psychological studies; clinically, obsessions are abnormal preoccupations that the person is aware are profoundly unusual. Today, it is sometimes even seen as a praiseworthy state in popular culture. Tracing the word's evolution through these various manifestations is the aim of this generous work. Davis delves into medical texts from the 18th century, the case histories of Samuel Johnson (long supposed to have had Tourette's Syndrome) and Emile Zola (examined by the scientists of his day, whose conclusions illustrated "the developing contradiction of obsession as a social and cultural category"), and Freud's early theories of obsessive fixations. He also deconstructs modern Calvin Klein perfume ads and the work of visual artists like Max Klinger and Adolf Wolfli. From romantic obsessions to artistic obsessions to the neural underpinnings of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (from which the author and several relatives suffer), no aspect of the word or conceptis left unexplored. Davis does not neglect the important question of why we medicate clinically obsessive people, yet laud those who are obsessed by their music, art, sports or other vocational calling. Beautifully written and impeccably-perhaps obsessively-researched: important reading for anyone interested in inescapable fascinations.

Kirkus Reviews

"A fine and important study which, as ever with Davis's work, conveys both authority and wisdom."

Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies - Stuart Murray

"Intellectually bold and constantly insightful, this work . . . manages to link Moby-Dick and the TV show Monk."

Chicago Tribune - Julia Keller

“Davis’s astute, engaging history shows just how vexed and fluctuating is the line between clinical obsession and all that passes in our culture as habit and ritual. His thought-provoking book greatly extends arguments about American psychiatry and should be welcomed for doing so.”

Christopher Lane

“Lennard Davis’s new book offers a probing analysis of the history of obsession in modern culture. The book brilliantly ranges across disciplines to discern just how we became so obsessed with being obsessed. In so doing, it offers a path breaking model of how to link the humanities and medicine for the benefit of patients and their care-givers. His perspective is both sympathetic and humane.”

Allan M. Brandt

"Obsession provides an insightful and nuanced review of the history of this tragic illness by exposing obsessive behaviour and contrasting it with the common, mildly obsessive behaviours we all engage in. The question of difference, and thus definition, is a recurring motif. Davis is a professor at the University of Illinois in the departments of English, Medical Education, and Disability and Human Development, and has an interesting broad perspective. He insists that to treat an illness effectively, we must understand its history and evolution in a cultural context. Obsession has evolved from being subjacent to demonic possession into something to be almost proud of, to want even. Obsession is the hallmark of genius, of industry and perhaps of modern life, such as our need to regularly check e-mail. . . . A witty and interesting historical tour of a fascinating subject."

Nature - Ian Brooks

“Davis’s larger argument, massively documented, is that disease is not merely a physical condition, but something that emerges in the course of a history. Treating obsession apart from that history is an obstacle to our understanding it. Understanding must begin, he argues, with the assumption ‘that obsession is a wide-ranging, social, cultural, historical, and, yes, medical phenomenon.’ This is a wise and learned book, although the learning is lightly worn and the wisdom mildly (if emphatically) dispensed in a style that captivates even as it instructs.”

Stanley Fish

"If you should pick up the book expecting an obsessively thorough discourse, you won’t be disappointed. But Davis is a fine writer, and he grabs the reader at the outset by confessing his own childhood rituals."

Chicago Reader - Deanna Isaacs

"Those with a keen interest in (or perhaps an obsession with) obsession and its place in human culture will enjoy Davis’s book."
—Melinda Wenner, Scientific American Mind
 

Scientific American - Melinda Wenner

"This is an engaging book which I read with considerable - dare I say, obsessive? - enjoyment. Lennard Davis has compiled a thorough history of 'obsession' throughout the ages and across disciplines. He is particularly interested in how our society distinguishes hobbies, artistic pursuits and other excessive behaviours from obsessions, and why the medical profession pathologises behaviour that appears, at worst, benign and is, at best, responsible for some of humanity's greatest achievements. The book is laced with rich examples exemplifying obsessional people and their work."

Times Higher Education - Christine Purdon

“Original and thought-provoking. Davis’s elegant analysis of the interplay between culture and psyche is an invaluable contribution to the literature on obsession.”

Patricia Pearson

“In his beautifully wrought interdisciplinary history of obsession, Lennard Davis delves into the deepest mysteries of human consciousness and the myriad ways that culture has tried to solve the mind's riddles. Through his astute and learned analysis of mental states ranging from demonic possession to single-minded genius to disturbing pathology, Davis paints a fascinating picture of human complexity. In his pages, we learn of the glories and the tragedies of passionate fixation—of profound achievements in art, athletics, and love; of lives and families broken beyond repair. Meditating on the great paradox of obsession—it generates brilliance and causes dysfunction—Davis does more than provide a fascinating cultural history of an elemental human condition. He tells the story, moving and memorable, of one of the life's most enduring curses and gifts.”

Eric G. Wilson

"Quirky but informative. . . . Overall, Obsession successfully accomplishes Davis’s goal of providing a 'chapter in the ongoing history of obsessions written by people who are obsessed with obsession.' And, he promises us, 'it won’t be the last, since obsession, like guilt, is the gift that keeps giving.'

American Scholar - Richard Restak

"Davis astutely, and accurately, depicts obsession as being far more than simply an excessive interest, preoccupation, fixation, or hobby. He also clearly derfines it as a pathological phenomenon and a highly significant medical category."

Journal of the History of Medicine - Ian Miller

"Quirky but informative. . . . Overall, Obsession successfully accomplishes Davis’s goal of providing a 'chapter in the ongoing history of obsessions written by people who are obsessed with obsession.' And, he promises us, 'it won’t be the last, since obsession, like guilt, is the gift that keeps giving.'”n Scholar

Davis astutely, and accurately, depicts obsession as being far more than simply an excessive interest, preoccupation, fixation, or hobby. He also clearly derfines it as a pathological phenomenon and a highly significant medical category.

— Ian Miller

Journal of the History of Medicine

A fine and important study which, as ever with Davis's work, conveys both authority and wisdom.

— Stuart Murray

Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies

This is an engaging book which I read with considerable - dare I say, obsessive? - enjoyment. Lennard Davis has compiled a thorough history of 'obsession' throughout the ages and across disciplines. He is particularly interested in how our society distinguishes hobbies, artistic pursuits and other excessive behaviours from obsessions, and why the medical profession pathologises behaviour that appears, at worst, benign and is, at best, responsible for some of humanity's greatest achievements. The book is laced with rich examples exemplifying obsessional people and their work.

— Christine Purdon

Times Higher Education

Obsession provides an insightful and nuanced review of the history of this tragic illness by exposing obsessive behaviour and contrasting it with the common, mildly obsessive behaviours we all engage in. The question of difference, and thus definition, is a recurring motif. Davis is a professor at the University of Illinois in the departments of English, Medical Education, and Disability and Human Development, and has an interesting broad perspective. He insists that to treat an illness effectively, we must understand its history and evolution in a cultural context. Obsession has evolved from being subjacent to demonic possession into something to be almost proud of, to want even. Obsession is the hallmark of genius, of industry and perhaps of modern life, such as our need to regularly check e-mail. . . . A witty and interesting historical tour of a fascinating subject.

— Ian Brooks

Nature

Intellectually bold and constantly insightful, this work . . . manages to link Moby-Dick and the TV show Monk.

— Julia Keller

Chicago Tribune

Quirky but informative. . . . Overall, Obsession successfully accomplishes Davis’s goal of providing a 'chapter in the ongoing history of obsessions written by people who are obsessed with obsession.' And, he promises us, 'it won’t be the last, since obsession, like guilt, is the gift that keeps giving.'”

— Richard Restak

American Scholar

If you should pick up the book expecting an obsessively thorough discourse, you won’t be disappointed. But Davis is a fine writer, and he grabs the reader at the outset by confessing his own childhood rituals.

— Deanna Isaacs

Chicago Reader

Those with a keen interest in (or perhaps an obsession with) obsession and its place in human culture will enjoy Davis’s book."

—Melinda Wenner, Scientific American Mind

 

 

— Melinda Wenner

Scientific American