Engendering a Therapeutic Ethos: Modernity, Masculinity & Nervousness

This article considers discourses of nervousness as an important historical dimension of the therapeutic turn. By tracing an emerging therapeutic sensibility through Australian medical literature and the popular print media of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it provides an Antipodean perspective on the discursive and cultural terrain receptive to Freudian ideas and psychology, which were central to the ascendancy of a psychotherapeutic ethos. Through a particular focus on concerns about nervous men, the article explores how perceived problems of nervousness destabilized masculine ideals and helped engender a greater concern with personal distress, factors significant for the florescence of therapeutic culture.