Title Joseph Conrad and psychological medicine / Martin Bock

Published Lubbock, Tex. : Texas Tech University Press, ©2002

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Description 1 online resource (xxiii, 277 pages) : illustrations Contents Lunacy, Conrad, and his doctors. Before Freud ; Conrad's water cures ; Conrad's breakdown -- Reading medically. The vivid, nervous descriptions of Conrad's fiction ; Restraint ; Solitude/seclusion ; Water ; Medical allegory in the later novels -- Conclusion: the heart in its perplexity -- Joseph Conrad's medical entourage Summary Conrad's life and fiction are often read through the lens of Freudian thought, though Conrad understood his own health from a pre-Freudian perspective. Joseph Conrad and Psychological Medicine recovers that perspective, revises our understanding of Conrad's life, and rethinks the dominant themes of his work in light of pre-Freudian medical psychology. Beginning with a social history of late-nineteenth-century medical psychology and hysteria studies, Bock's study presents a clear and readable synopsis of fin-de-siècle theories of nervous disorder and moral insanity, shows how Conrad's doctors were trained in medical theories that privilege the physiological over the psychological, and describes what Conrad endured during his water cures at Champel-les-Bains and in an English culture that constructed nervous disease-particularly his diagnosed neurasthenia-as a feminine disorder. Joseph Conrad and Psychological Medicine reads Conrad's fiction medically, showing how Conrad's work focuses on such narrative strategies as Conrad's rhetoric of hysteria and enervation and his vivid, nervous descriptions, and it shows how major tropes such as restraint, seclusion, and water- all treatments for insanity-were important issues in the medical discourse of Conrad's day and are themes that run through Conrad's fiction. Bock's study also suggests that Conrad's major breakdown of 1910 was an epiphany, an event Conrad feared for decades but that afterwards allowed him to shift the interests of his fiction. The post-breakdown fiction offers less brooding and more allegorized narrations of Conrad's medical history as he moves towards a greater acceptance, late in his life, of his gender and sexuality Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-258) and index Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL English Print version record digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL Subject Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 -- Knowledge -- Psychology Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 -- Psychology Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 Conrad, Joseph. Psychological fiction, English -- History and criticism Novelists, English -- 20th century -- Psychology Medical fiction -- History and criticism Psychology in literature. Medicine in literature. Medicine in Literature Psychology -- history LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Medicine in literature Medical fiction Novelists, English -- Psychology Psychological fiction, English Psychology Psychology in literature Psychotherapie Neurasthenie Psychische stoornissen. Romans. Engels. English Literature. English. Languages & Literatures. Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book LC no. 2001006418 ISBN 1423766164 9781423766162 1281093270 9781281093271 9786611093273 6611093273

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