Foreword
Acknowledgments
Notes on text
Introduction

Chapter 1: Mental Illness
Chapter 2: Mania
Chapter 3: Melancholia
Chapter 4: Hysteria
Chapter 5: Catharsis
Chapter 6: Phrenitis

Conclusion

Notes
Index

"This volume examines modern questions around psychiatry through a historical lens, teasing apart associations with ancient medicine, philosophy and myth to demonstrate how these reflect internal contradictions and ambiguities within modern conceptions of mental illness and its treatment. By exploring a series of explanatory models and diagnoses, and mapping key connections between ancient and modern frameworks, it demonstrates how the process of exploring the connections between modern and ancient psychiatry can illuminate modern understandings of mental illness, its therapies, and its place in contemporary society and culture"--

Jessica Wright is Assistant Professor of Classics and Medical Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA.