Melancholic Habits: Burton's Anatomy and the Mind Sciences by Jennifer Radden (review)

With Melancholic Habits: Burton's Anatomy and the Mind Sciences, Professor Emerita of Philosophy Jennifer Radden (University of Massachusets, Boston) presents a selective reading and interpretation of Robert Burton's magnum opus, The Anatomy of Melancholy, first published in 1621. Radden argues that the work holds new relevance today in light of recent developments in the mind sciences, including medical psychiatry, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology. In particular Radden notes that newly established cognitivist models of mind invite scholars to look more closely at Burton's claims about the interactions among mind, body, and aberrant mental states. Melancholic Habits first outlines Burton's understanding of melancholy as habit, then presents Burton's suggestions for the prevention and alleviation of the disorder, and finally offers discussion of some of the potential implications of Burton's work for the understanding and treatment of today's mood disorders. Radden has published widely on the philosophy of psychiatry, abberant mental states, and the history of medicine, and brings her expertise in all three of these areas to this most recent monograph.

Radden herself presents Melancholic Habits as a selective and interpretive project and not a complete or consistent reapplication of Burton's theories. In her introduction she readily acknowledges the danger of drawing too close an analogy between Burton's somewhat inconsistent notion of melancholy and today's clinical mood disorders (specifically, depression and anxiety). She notes the need to carefully divorce many of Burton's ideas from the humoral medicine, Aristotelian faculty psychology, and other non-scientific theories upon which they are based. She addresses other historical and methodological difficulties, such as the selection of a source text for The Anatomy. Radden relies on the third edition, published in 1628, which Burton himself proof corrected. While Burton went on to make changes and additions to his text for editions published between 1624 and 1651, textual scholars seem to agree that these corrections were minor, and that his central arguments remained largely unchanged from the first edition. As Radden notes, an updated edited edition of The Anatomy is in production and incorporates annotations that Burton made in copies of his own work. While the author's annotations may be well outside the scope of the Radden's project, this forthcoming edition may open up even further avenues for consideration regarding Burton's theories. Radden also addresses some of the linguistic issues arising from Burton's 17^th-century language, such as his use of the term "cure" in the Second Partition, which in modern terms should be understood as something more like a "remedy" or a temporary alleviation of symptoms. Historical methodological challenges aside, Radden presents a fascinating look at how Burton's work preconceives, and may contribute to, modern discussion in the mind sciences.

As the title suggests, the aim of Melancholic Habits is to highlight Burton's conception of melancholy as a mental and behavioural habit. Chapters 1 to 7 outline the multiple factors – including the imagination, the passions, and bodily states – that play a role in the formation of the melancholic habit. Imagination plays perhaps the most crucial role, for Burton observes that through the power of imagination, patients' expectations about their prognosis can negatively or positively affect their healing (something we might recognize today as the placebo and nocebo effects). As Radden notes, Burton believes so strongly in the power of the imagination to influence the mind and body that he goes so far as to suggest that patients can and should be deceived if it might positively influence their recovery.

Many have dismissed Burton's definition of melancholy as too broad and too inconsistent to be of any use clinically; however, Melancholic Habits suggests that Burton's conception of melancholy is deliberately vague. In Radden's view, Burton sees melancholy not as a single state, but as a cluster of symptoms and symptom sequences that may change, influence each other, and develop over time (into a...