The Nature of Melancholy. From Aristotle to Kristeva.

Abstract

Radden, Jennifer, Ed. The Nature of Melancholy. From Aristotle to Kristeva. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. xv + 373 pp. $35.00. This is the first collection of original historical Western texts on melancholy, melancholia, and depression. Its more than 30 selections come from philosophers, religious, and literary figures as well as medical specialists and modern psychological scholars. Medical authors range from Galen, through Benjamin Rush, to Kraepelin, Freud, Melanie Klein, and Aaron Beck. Among the well known literary figures are Baudelaire, Goethe, and Keats. The medical people including psychoanalysts seem to predominate. The editor, a professor of philosophy, has written extensively on psychiatric matters. Her in-depth introduction identifies links between the selections and discusses the relationship between the historical accounts of melancholy and contemporary psychiatric views on depression. Her intended audience, as noted on the book jacket, is very broad. It includes students in the mental health related and social science fields, as well as sufferers from depression and their families.

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