Idioms of Distress: Psychosomatic Disorders in Medical and Imaginative Literature
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Chicago, Ill
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
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- furst lr: idioms of distress: psychosomatic disorders in medical and imaginative literature
- book reviews (meyer hs, ed)
by Lillian R. Furst, 225 pp, $65.50, ISBN 0-7914-5557-2, paper, $21.95, ISBN 0-7914-5558-0, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2003.
Psychosomatic illness has long been a favorite literary device, because it reverses the usual pattern of mental disorder: instead of a bodily disorder being reflected in the mind, a mental disorder is reflected in the body. To an author, psychosomatic illness can serve as a useful way to describe a character's inner life.
In Idioms of Distress, Lilian Furst, professor of comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has written a lucid study of descriptions of psychosomatic illness in literature—both the literature of psychiatry and imaginative literature. She considers six literary works, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter through Pat Barker's Regeneration.
In the literature of psychiatry, Furst states, writings on psychosomatic illness have mirrored trends in the psychiatric literature in general. Over time, …
