Engendering a Therapeutic Ethos: Modernity, Masculinity & Nervousness KATIE WRIGHT Abstract This article considers discourses of “nervousness” as an important his- torical 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 per- ceived problems of “nervousness” destabilized masculine ideals and helped engender a greater concern with personal distress, factors significant for the florescence of therapeutic culture. ***** Therapeutic Culture and the Problem of Nerves Modern civilization with its stress and strain seems to have accentuated if not created endless phobias and remarkable behaviour patterns and the taunt ‘thou cannot minister to a mind diseased’ leaves the physician feeling hopeless and depressed. The Medical Journal of Australia, 1924 In October 1881, prominent colonial journalist and litterateur, James Smith, delivered a lecture in Melbourne for the Australian Health Society. He began with the declaration that there were physical afflictions resulting from “our unnatural and disordered lives” which deserved serious attention. 1 Smith argued that popu- larizing knowledge of health was an important weapon in combat- ing disease, and introducing the topic of his lecture, The Nervous System: Its Use and Abuse, he suggested that this held true espe- cially in cases of nervous disorder, which was a cause of “exquisite suffering” for many. Smith shared with the audience an anecdote about an “old lady who innocently remarked that she wished she had lived before nerves were invented”. In expounding the story, he explained that the “corporeal machinery” is highly complex and in an ideal state of health one is happily unaware of its functioning. “The discovery of nerves by any one of us is, therefore, a misfor- tune,” he continued, “because it implies nervous disorder; and, consequently, the old woman’s wish was by no means as absurd as, at first sight, it might appear to have been”. 2 Smith’s lecture, published in the respected monthly periodical, the Victorian Review, and reprinted as a pamphlet for the Austra- Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. 22 No. 1 March 2009 ISSN 0952-1909 © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.