Introduction: Disordered Mood as Historical Problem

Abstract

The introduction situates the narrative of this book—the reconceptualisation of melancholia in nineteenth-century psychiatry—firstly in the context of current attempts to ‘resurrect’ melancholia as a psychiatric diagnosis, secondly in relation to the history of melancholia more broadly, and finally in the context of past and present debates about classification in psychiatry. The core argument of the book is briefly outlined: in the nineteenth century, melancholia was reconfigured as a modern biomedical disorder of emotion. Two developments in particular were foundational to this new model of melancholia. The first was the uptake of physiological language and concepts into psychological medicine. The second was the institutionalisation of medical statistics together with a standardisation of asylum recording practices.