num_pages: 296
description: 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 categoryboth 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 Daviss graceful analysis.
language: English
title: Obsession: A History
publisher: University of Chicago Press