The Burdens of Intimacy: Psychoanalysis and Victorian Masculinity

Why does passion bewilder and torment so many Victorian protagonists? And why do so many literary characters experience moments of ecstasy before their deaths? In this original study, Christopher Lane shows why Victorian fiction conveys both the pleasure and anguish of intimacy. Examining works by Bulwer-Lytton, Swinburne, Schreiner, Hardy, James, Santayana, and Forster, he argues that these writers struggled with aspects of psychology that undermined the utilitarian ethos of the Victorian age.

Literature & Fiction

Lane, Christopher

History & Criticism

University of Chicago Press

Hatred and Civility: The Antisocial Life in Victorian England

This lively, accessible account of historical and literary works explains why many Victorians nursed a hostile vision of man and society and how misanthropy - once a means of conveying integrity and justified disdain of society's excesses - turned immoral and quasi-criminal. Delivering a surprising new perspective on the past, Christopher Lane shows that the fanatics troubling us today share many qualities with our supposedly moral ancestors.

British & Irish

Columbia University Press

This lively, accessible account of historical and literary works explains why many Victorians nursed a hostile vision of man and society and how misanthropy--once a means of conveying integrity and justified disdain of society's excesses--turned immoral and quasi-criminal. Delivering a surprising new perspective on the past, Christopher Lane shows that the fanatics troubling us today share many qualities with our supposedly moral ancestors.

Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness

In the 1970s, a small group of leading psychiatrists met behind closed doors and literally rewrote the book on their profession. Revising and greatly expanding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short), they turned what had been a thin, spiral-bound handbook into a hefty tome. Almost overnight the number of diagnoses exploded. The result was a windfall for the pharmaceutical industry and a massive conflict of interest for psychiatry at large. This spellbinding book is the first behind-the-scenes account of what really happened and why. With unprecedented access to the American Psychiatric Association archives and previously classified memos from drug company executives, Christopher Lane unearths the disturbing truth: with little scientific justification and sometimes hilariously improbable rationales, hundreds of conditions--among them shyness--are now defined as psychiatric disorders and considered treatable with drugs. Lane shows how long-standing disagreements within the profession set the stage for these changes, and he assesses who has gained and what's been lost in the process of medicalizing emotions. With dry wit, he demolishes the façade of objective research behind which the revolution in psychiatry has hidden. He finds a profession riddled with backbiting and jockeying, and even more troubling, a profession increasingly beholden to its corporate sponsors.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Yale University Press

The Victorian era was the first great "Age of Doubt" and a critical moment in the history of Western ideas. Leading nineteenth-century intellectuals battled the Church and struggled to absorb radical scientific discoveries that upended everything the Bible had taught them about the world. In The Age of Doubt, distinguished scholar Christopher Lane tells the fascinating story of a society under strain as virtually all aspects of life changed abruptly.In deft portraits of scientific, literary, and intellectual icons who challenged the prevailing religious orthodoxy, from Robert Chambers and Anne Brontë to Charles Darwin and Thomas H. Huxley, Lane demonstrates how they and other Victorians succeeded in turning doubt from a religious sin into an ethical necessity.The dramatic adjustment of Victorian society has echoes today as technology, science, and religion grapple with moral issues that seemed unimaginable even a decade ago. Yet the Victorians' crisis of faith generated a far more searching engagement with religious belief than the "new atheism" that has evolved today. More profoundly than any generation before them, the Victorians came to view doubt as inseparable from belief, thought, and debate, as well as a much-needed antidote to fanaticism and unbridled certainty. By contrast, a look at today's extremes--from the biblical literalists behind the Creation Museum to the rigidity of Richard Dawkins's atheism--highlights our modern-day inability to embrace doubt.

The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty

In the 1970s, a small group of leading psychiatrists met behind closed doors and literally rewrote the book on their profession. Revising and greatly expanding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short), they turned what had been a thin, spiral-bound handbook into a hefty tome. Almost overnight the number of diagnoses exploded. The result was a windfall for the pharmaceutical industry and a massive conflict of interest for psychiatry at large.This spellbinding book is the first behind-the-scenes account of what really happened and why. With unprecedented access to the American Psychiatric Association archives and previously classified memos from drug company executives, Christopher Lane unearths the disturbing truth: with little scientific justification and sometimes hilariously improbable rationales, hundreds of conditions--among them shyness--are now defined as psychiatric disorders and considered treatable with drugs. Lane shows how long-standing disagreements within the profession set the stage for these changes, and he assesses who has gained and what's been lost in the process of medicalizing emotions. With dry wit, he demolishes the façade of objective research behind which the revolution in psychiatry has hidden. He finds a profession riddled with backbiting and jockeying, and even more troubling, a profession increasingly beholden to its corporate sponsors.

The Victorian era was the first great "Age of Doubt" and a critical moment in the history of Western ideas. Leading nineteenth-century intellectuals battled the Church and struggled to absorb radical scientific discoveries that upended everything the Bible had taught them about the world. In The Age of Doubt, distinguished scholar Christopher Lane tells the fascinating story of a society under strain as virtually all aspects of life changed abruptly. In deft portraits of scientific, literary, and intellectual icons who challenged the prevailing religious orthodoxy, from Robert Chambers and Anne Brontë to Charles Darwin and Thomas H. Huxley, Lane demonstrates how they and other Victorians succeeded in turning doubt from a religious sin into an ethical necessity. The dramatic adjustment of Victorian society has echoes today as technology, science, and religion grapple with moral issues that seemed unimaginable even a decade ago. Yet the Victorians' crisis of faith generated a far more searching engagement with religious belief than the "new atheism" that has evolved today. More profoundly than any generation before them, the Victorians came to view doubt as inseparable from belief, thought, and debate, as well as a much-needed antidote to fanaticism and unbridled certainty. By contrast, a look at today's extremes--from the biblical literalists behind the Creation Museum to the rigidity of Richard Dawkins's atheism--highlights our modern-day inability to embrace doubt.

The dramatic untold story of how Norman Vincent Peale and a handful of conservative allies fueled the massive rise of religiosity in the United States during the 1950s Near the height of Cold War hysteria, when the threat of all-out nuclear war felt real and perilous, American minister Norman Vincent Peale published The Power of Positive Thinking. Selling millions of copies worldwide, the book offered a gospel of self-assurance in an age of mass anxiety. Despite Peale's success and his ties to powerful conservatives such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, and Joseph McCarthy, the full story of his movement has never been told. Christopher Lane shows how the famed minister's brand of Christian psychology inflamed the nation's religious revival by promoting the concept that belief in God was essential to the health and harmony of all Americans. We learn in vivid detail how Peale and his powerful supporters orchestrated major changes in a nation newly defined as living "under God." This blurring of the lines between religion and medicine would reshape religion as we know it in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

A Storm's Fury . . .
Awakened out of a sound sleep, Police Detective Ray Attla is disgruntled when he's assigned to the investigation of a death at an isolated oil rig in the icy Alaskan wilderness. Especially since he's off duty, tucked away in a little hut the used to call home on the Inupiat reservation. But Ray is the closest official to the scene and fierce Arctic storm has closed off the area.
A Shaman's Vision . . .
Despite dire warnings from his ancient grandfather and protests from his fiancee, Ray heads for the rig on his snowmobile and quickly determines that the frozen body encased in a piece of oil pipe is no accidental death. The victim's Rolex implicates a big-time oil man, and the marks of the Eskimo hunter slashed across his body point to ritual murder. With few clues, no reinforcements, and little help from a novice local deputy, Ray gives in to his grandfather's pleas that he consult the Inupiat shaman--but not before he's hunting a multiple killer, and not before he himself becomes the hunted . . .

Elements of a Kill (Inupiat Eskimo Mysteries)

United States

AVON.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lane, Christopher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lane, Christopher

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lane, Christopher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Burdens of Intimacy: Psychoanalysis and Victorian Masculinity

The Burdens of Intimacy: Psychoanalysis and Victorian Masculinity

Hatred and Civility: The Antisocial Life in Victorian England

Hatred and Civility: The Antisocial Life in Victorian England

Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness

The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty

Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness

The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty

Surge of Piety: Norman Vincent Peale and the Remaking of American Religious Life

Elements of a Kill (Inupiat Eskimo Mysteries)