Tag: anxiety
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The literary breakdown in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch
Carol-Ann FarkasBoston, Massachusetts, United States I. Diagnostically speaking, the “nervous” or “mental” breakdown is not a thing. The term has never been formally used in psychology, which has long preferred specific, definable categorizations of symptoms and conditions: stress, fatigue, anxiety, depression, trauma.1 And yet the phenomenon persists in popular usage.1,2 Why? We like the “breakdown”…
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Ignes Fatui of the neurotic mind
Ashten R. DuncanTulsa, Oklahoma, United States Rocking in my vessel sturdyUpon the waters of a swamp so dirty,I am in the crow’s nestEn route to my impending test. Ever since I was young,I have been given to the far-flung:Quiet panic of a possible foe,Wishes to never disturb another’s flow. In the confines of the nest,I…
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Climate trauma in Monique Roffey’s Archipelago
Lucille MiaoNew Jersey, United States In recent years, the idea of ecological catastrophe has captured the artistic imagination and infiltrated popular culture through novels such as Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife and television series like teen drama The 100 (2014–). These stories often tell of a post-apocalyptic future in which human-induced climate change has devastated…
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Longitudinal lunacy: Science and madness in the eighteenth century
Richard de GrijsSydney, AustraliaDaniel VuillerminBeijing, China “A couple of young Non conformist preachers from Worksop in the North of Derbyshire came thither to have my approbation of some Method they had to propose for finding the Longitude at sea, one I shall tell you because it will make you laugh abundantly.”1 John Flamsteed, Britain’s first…
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A picture of ill-health: The illness of Elizabeth Siddal
Emily BoyleDublin, Ireland It is difficult to think of Ophelia, one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters, without bringing to mind the famous depiction of her by John Everett Millais. In Hamlet, the sensitive and fragile Ophelia is driven mad by grief after her lover Hamlet rejects her and kills her father Polonius. After very poetically…
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That hospital smell
Mariel TishmaChicago, Illinois, United States What smells good to you? Do you know why? To many people smell seems of little significance, yet it is a powerful sense, having evolved earlier than the more complex senses of sight and hearing.1, 2 Smell is unique in how it is processed, being first detected by neurons which…
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Healing in post-genocide Rwanda
Vigneshwar SubramanianNivetha SubramanianCleveland, Ohio, United States In April 1994, one of the largest genocides since the Holocaust erupted in Rwanda as the Hutu ethnic majority conducted a targeted slaughter of the Tutsi people.1 In a span of just over 100 days, over 800,000 people were killed.2 Infectious diseases such as HIV ran rampant, a consequence…
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A proliferation of monsters: Art of the weird as expressions of anxiety in Britain and Japan
Steve WheelerGreenwich, London, England The human fascination with fear of the unknown has been documented in art and literature across civilization for centuries. In every culture, this has manifested itself in the form of creatures as bizarre as they are terrifying. Since the evolution of language, humans have invented and told stories about monsters to…