From Publishers Weekly
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.
From School Library Journal
Starred Review. 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
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
