Dr.
Ian Irvine Ph.D.
Viene de atras. Libros de Psiquiatría
...Similarly, references to the malady are rare in ancient Greek
medicine and philosophy, though it was the Greeks who first articulated the
problem of ‘melancholy’ (sometimes called the ‘black gall’ or the
‘spleen’). Early descriptions of this malady were coloured by the new
scientific paradigms sweeping Greek society at the time. The older sacred
accounts of mental and emotional dysfunctioning (ie. arising out of animistic,
mythological and demonological systems) were under attack from the so-called
humoral system, which had scientific pretensions. According to the humoral
system, black bile was one of the body humors - specifically a body humor
secreted by either the gall bladder or the spleen. The body humors, it was
theorised, had to be in a state of balance for a person to be physically and
mentally healthy. Melancholy resulted when the gall bladder or spleen secreted
too much black bile. The ancient writings on this imbalance describe what early
nineteenth century writers called the personality type of the ‘splenetic.’
Though post-eighteenth century writers often borrowed
elements of the ancient lore on ‘melancholy’ to round out their descriptions
of chronic ennui, it is clear that the particular malady under discussion in
this book (normative ennui) owes very little to the ancient literature on black
melancholy. What is absent from classical Greek philosophical and medical
descriptions of ‘black melancholy’ is reference to anything approaching the
ennui cycle - the mainstay of modern descriptions of normative ennui. We also
search classical texts in vain for any reference to the temporal symptoms
associated with chronic ennui, ie. the long-lasting experience of time as a
burden. There is also no reference to anything like sociocultural ennui.
The lore of melancholy seems to have contributed more
to modern descriptions of the creative and dysfunctional forms of ennui. For
example, nineteenth century writers on creative ennui often adapted
Aristotle’s arguments concerning the difference between the ‘melancholy’
of madmen and the melancholy of people of genius, as analysed in his Problemata
Physica61 in order to distinguish between creative and dysfunctional forms of
chronic ennui.
Descriptions of states akin to chronic ennui are also
all but absent from the literature of the ancient Greeks. Kuhn62 argues
plausibly (though tentatively) that Sophocles’ Philoctetes is the first
extended literary treatment of the ailment. In the play, however, Philoctetes’
suffering is attributed to snake bite and solitude.63 At best he could be
diagnosed as a dysfunctional melancholic (therefore suffering from dysfunctional
ennui). In modern terminology his symptoms, if read psychologically, seem
commensurate with a state of chronic depression punctured by episodes of severe
psychosis. These are, it is to be admitted, characteristics of the medieval and
Early Modern ‘splenetic’ so often confused with the ennuyé.64 Apart from
these similarities, however, there is again no clear description of anything
approaching normative ennui, and certainly nothing like sociocultural ennui in
the play.
The researcher must look to the Roman world,
particularly to the periods of the later Roman Republic and early Imperial Rome,
for the first fully-fledged literary and philosophical descriptions of the forms
of chronic ennui that haunt the Western world today. Not only do many modern
commentators on the Roman world point to specific outbreaks of something like
sociocultural ennui, but it is also evident that many of the people living
through those periods were also aware that they were suffering from a certain
kind of psycho-social malady different in kind from the maladies of the subject
that the earlier Roman philosophers and the classical Greek philosophers had
documented.65 Some of the most compelling descriptions of chronic ennui can be
gleaned from the writers, poets, philosophers and dramatists of the above
mentioned periods.
(I) Lucretius
The Roman poet Lucretius, in his work On the Nature of
Things (De Rerum Natura 60-55B.C.), speaks of the suffering caused by a
psychospiritual malady similar to what is here termed chronic ennui. In a
passage of striking poetic (and for the modern world ‘prophetic’) insight he
says:
Volver a los libros de psiquiatría
Fuente: http://www.greatunpublished.com/Authors/samples/Ian_Irvine_sample2.htm
