Difference and Pathology

Sander L. Gilman is Goldwyn Smith Professor of Humane Studies in the Departments of German Literature and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University and is also Professor of the History of Psychiatry at the Cornell Medical College.

In ten chapters filled with literary examples and historical evidence of astonishing diversity, a major historian of psychoanalysis develops enough theses for several books. Acknowledging stereotypes as necessary and ubiquitous, Gilman traces some important destructive ones from Aristotle to the present: women, Jews, and blacks seen as repositories of sex, disease, and madness. Embracing history, philosophy, psychology, public health, and the arts, this landmark work clears a path through terrain strewn with false historical pointers, and puts Freud's influence in a welcome new light.(Library Journal)