Localization is a key move in the history of medicine across cultures, arguably; but a parallel, if not alternative, narrative can be noticed in the Graeco-Roman tradition (and elsewhere), which I have called one of ‘delocalization’, discussed in Chapter 3:namely, the approach to disease, and especially mental disease, in terms of ‘holistic’ impact on the patient. This surfaces most prominently in some authors, but can also be noticed as a matter of discussion of the locus affectus in great thinkers like Galen. In this particular strand of the history of phrenitis the key authors who have reached us are the Roman author of De medicina, Celsus; the Atomist philosopher and doctor Asclepiades; and the thinkers of the Methodist tradition, represented most extensively by Caelius Aurelianus as far as phrenitis is concerned. This chapter surveys the relevant texts by Celsus and Caelius and the fragmentary evidence on Asclepiades, where an important cluster of shared principles emerges: an interest in psychology and in the health of the individual ‘as a whole’, a disregard for the localization of the disease in a specific body part, and of fever as a key pathological indicator, and a strong inclination towards psychotherapeutical and ‘soothing’ measures.

This chapter provides a neuropsychological account of Messiaen’s well-known sound-to-colour synaesthesia. It offers an overview of the perceptual, cognitive, and neurological mechanisms underlying the condition, with reference to Messiaen’s own experience and to scientific understandings of this phenomenon.

“Spirits” discusses the limitation of strict materialist explanations of the processes of inanition, and how hunger artists fit in alternative vitalist, naturist, eclectic, spiritualist approaches, which at the time had numerous defenders. Succi’s case, being the editor of the spiritist journal Il Correo Spiritico is a paradigmatic example of this trend. In that context of heterodoxy, hunger artists contributed towards opening the door to a psychological turn, to the progressive emergence of psychological explanations of voluntary hunger and resistance to inanition as a new field of scientific inquiry, often with a gender bias. The psychological turn gave new prominence to names such as Charles Richet and Hippolyte Bernheim, but it also had its roots in Luigi Luciani’s non-strictly materialist explanation of Succi’s resistance to inanition in Florence in 1888. The chapter brings to the fore the names of several women fasters, often treated as patients and pathologized as “fasting girls”, but in other cases appearing in the public sphere like other male professional fasters and following analogous performances. In that gendered psychological turn, terms such as willpower, inner force, hypnosis, and insanity progressively gained influence in explanations on the causes of resistance to prolonged fasting.

Chapter 10 discusses different types of scientific studies that need to be done to fully get a grip on the science of the fair process effect and its potentially alleviating effects on various developing instances of societal discontent. This includes field experiments and studies examining the important role of trust and issues such as perceived legitimacy, self-esteem, and personal and informational uncertainty. We also need to understand the possible downsides of the fair process effect better, for example, that sometimes people use unfair procedures to stop learning from their mistakes. The chapter further notes important normative implications about the fair process effect and that we should be aware that the effect can be used to justify the current status quo and legitimize power structures in our societies. The chapter concludes by giving directions for the development of practical interventions that may be used on the basis of this book to counter intensified distrust, heightened polarization, and strong beliefs in unfounded conspiracy theories. Ultimately, using insights on the fair process effect conveyed in this book may lead us to become better and more sociable beings, which in the end may increase the chances of us living in a better world.

Chapter 1 reconstructs the conceptual history of tact as a social, ethical, and aesthetic category. Starting out with Voltaire’s 1769 definition that marks tact’s fundamental paradigm shift from a sense of feeling to a form of sociability, I reconstruct the word’s ensuing career as a key concept in 19th- and 20th-century pedagogical, philosophical, and literary discourse. I discuss tact’s history within the context of the demise of the ancien régime and the rise of the bourgeois subject, reflecting on a variety of different historical and philosophical explanations (Elias, Adorno, Foucault). I reconstruct how and why, around 1800, tact turns into a key philosophical term, depicting an intuitive form of empirical judgement (Kant). I show how, in the second half of the 19th century, tact, understood as an individual deviation from normative structures, came to occupy a key position in the method dispute between the humanities and the natural sciences (Helmholtz). I conclude by reflecting on how psychological tact went on to become a key category in modern and contemporary hermeneutics, uniting the otherwise antagonistic work of scholars incl. Adorno, Gadamer, Barthes, Felski, and Macé.

What kind of discourse was Freud’s psychoanalysis? A typical late-nineteenth-century positivist, Freud claimed that it is was a scientific, empirical psychology based on the always revisable observation of clinical data and distinguished it sharply from the a priori, meta-physical “speculations” of philosophy. Except that the ultimate object of psychoanalysis, the unconscious, is by definition beyond consciousness and therefore also beyond observation. So what distinguishes Freud’s psychoanalytic interpretations and “constructions” from philosophical speculations? In the end, what distinguishes his “metapsychology that leads behind consciousness” from a metaphysics? This is the question that this book attempts to answer by following Freud’s way of thinking, step by step and as closely as possible to the texts.

Informal borrowings are used for several reasons. They are used to name things, providing alternative synonyms for things already named in English but also names for things yet to be named. More often, however, they are used instead of standard English to communicate additional information that is social, psychological, rhetorical, or cultural in nature. The social function involves group solidarity and social distancing. The psychological function includes expression of emotions via a repertoire of expressions for a variety of emotional states and emotive labels. The rhetorical function includes informality, conciseness, forcefulness, wordplay, and small talk. The cultural function involves expressing cultural identity and stylization; while expressing cultural identity is often the reason for using such expressions, stylization is another phenomenon accounting for their common use among larger segments of American society.

Nineteenth-century European casinos tapped into new transportation and communication networks, and they were flexible enough to take advantage of the changing political map of Europe. The casinos found success amid these large structural transformations affecting the continent. They projected a new type of sociability that exuded a sense of exclusivity and democracy at once. The casino was also an environment that embraced social mixture. The casino attracted a transnational and polyglot clientele. Nineteenth-century casinos were physical expressions of contemporary ideas about fate and agency. The nineteenth-century casino also occasioned a prolonged discussion of the body, feeling, and mind, and there is a wide recognition of culture’s impact on the body. Seeing the effect that gambling had on players, nineteenth-century observers could consider how the self, the environment, and behavior all related to one another.

This chapter examines the origins and development of the “War Story” as a subgenre of American short fiction. It argues that the “War Story” evolved out of the Civil War and the subsequent flowering of realism, which influenced this subgenre both stylistically and philosophically. This chapter explores the major iterations of the “War Story” and documents its adaptation by writers such as Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and Tim O’Brien.