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A mad yearning for solitude: Timon the Misanthrope and his relevance to the study of ancient psychopathology
Ancient Greek and Latin medical authors considered a flight into solitude a compelling sign of mental disturbance, frequently described as misanthropia, a word fraught with meaning beyond the medical discourse. The fictionalised character Timon of Athens, the quintessential misanthrope, can shed lig...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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SAGE Publications
2023
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10160400/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36876402 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957154X231157187 |
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author | Metzger, Nadine |
author_facet | Metzger, Nadine |
author_sort | Metzger, Nadine |
collection | PubMed |
description | Ancient Greek and Latin medical authors considered a flight into solitude a compelling sign of mental disturbance, frequently described as misanthropia, a word fraught with meaning beyond the medical discourse. The fictionalised character Timon of Athens, the quintessential misanthrope, can shed light on ancient cultural concepts of self-imposed isolation from human contact. To cope with the sense of unease this deviant behaviour induced, misanthropia was explained as ‘madness’, ridiculed in various genres of humour, morally condemned in philosophy, and ultimately demonized in Christian cosmology. These various attempts at containment echo in the medical works of the age, making it impossible to comprehend the concept of misanthropia in ancient medicine without taking full account of the cultural context. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10160400 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | SAGE Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-101604002023-05-06 A mad yearning for solitude: Timon the Misanthrope and his relevance to the study of ancient psychopathology Metzger, Nadine Hist Psychiatry Articles Ancient Greek and Latin medical authors considered a flight into solitude a compelling sign of mental disturbance, frequently described as misanthropia, a word fraught with meaning beyond the medical discourse. The fictionalised character Timon of Athens, the quintessential misanthrope, can shed light on ancient cultural concepts of self-imposed isolation from human contact. To cope with the sense of unease this deviant behaviour induced, misanthropia was explained as ‘madness’, ridiculed in various genres of humour, morally condemned in philosophy, and ultimately demonized in Christian cosmology. These various attempts at containment echo in the medical works of the age, making it impossible to comprehend the concept of misanthropia in ancient medicine without taking full account of the cultural context. SAGE Publications 2023-03-06 2023-06 /pmc/articles/PMC10160400/ /pubmed/36876402 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957154X231157187 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
spellingShingle | Articles Metzger, Nadine A mad yearning for solitude: Timon the Misanthrope and his relevance to the study of ancient psychopathology |
title | A mad yearning for solitude: Timon the Misanthrope and his relevance to the study of ancient psychopathology |
title_full | A mad yearning for solitude: Timon the Misanthrope and his relevance to the study of ancient psychopathology |
title_fullStr | A mad yearning for solitude: Timon the Misanthrope and his relevance to the study of ancient psychopathology |
title_full_unstemmed | A mad yearning for solitude: Timon the Misanthrope and his relevance to the study of ancient psychopathology |
title_short | A mad yearning for solitude: Timon the Misanthrope and his relevance to the study of ancient psychopathology |
title_sort | mad yearning for solitude: timon the misanthrope and his relevance to the study of ancient psychopathology |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10160400/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36876402 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957154X231157187 |
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