Pathologies of Modern Space : Empty Space, Urban Anxiety, and the Recovery of the Public Self

__Pathologies of Modern Space__ traces the rise of agoraphobia and ties its astonishing growth to the emergence of urban modernity. In contrast to traditional medical conceptions of the disorder, Kathryn Milun shows that this anxiety is closely related to the emergence of "empty urban space": homogenous space, such as malls and parking lots, stripped of memory and tactile features. __Pathologies of Modern Space__ is a compelling cultural analysis of the history of medical treatments for agoraphobia and what they can tell us about the normative expectations for the public self in the modern city. "Pathologies of Modern Space traces the rise of agoraphobia in modern life and ties its astonishing growth to the emergence of urban modernity. The fear of stepping into the anonymity of modern cities and the anxiety that modern urban settings generate is in fact a central feature of modernity, and has been addressed by Georg Simmel and Richard Sennett. While agoraphobia is now generally treated by the psychiatric profession as a disorder unrelated to anything but the patient's psychology, Kathryn Milun shows that in the modern era its rise is closely related to the emergence of "empty urban space": homogenous space stripped of memory and tactile features (i.e., large plazas, sprawling freeways, shopping malls, and glass and steel office towers). When agoraphobia was first identified in the 1870s, psychologists connected it to features of modern urban life but, in subsequent eras, psychiatrists treated it as separate from the urban social context. While agoraphobia has exploded as a condition, the psychiatric profession has continued to ignore the social dimensions of the condition. The vast majority of sufferers are women, a fact that Milun uses to address gender differences in the way that humans experience the modern city. Pathologies of Modern Space covers a key mental health and social issue while also examining the increasing influence of a health profession that looks less to the social and more to the individual."--Publisher's information Cover 1 Title Page 2 Copyright Page 3 Table of Contents 4 Preface 6 Acknowledgments 16 Introduction 20 Chapter 1 The Disappearance of Public Space in Psychiatric Descriptions of Agoraphobia Dr. Westphal (1872) and Dr. Boyd (1991) 44 Chapter 2 The Nineteenth-Century Urban Commons as a Spatial Puzzle 70 Chapter 3 The Nineteenth-Century Urban Commons as a Gendered Puzzle 90 Chapter 4 The Twentieth-Century Urban Commons The Urban Freeway 118 Chapter 5 The Twentieth-Century Urban Commons The Shopping Center, Laboratory of Behaviorism 158 Chapter 6 The Twentieth-Century Urban Commons Neoliberal Universes of Nonrecognition 204 Chapter 7 Alternative Treatments for the Twenty-First-Century Urban Commons Horror Vacui, Solvitur Ambulando? 242 Conclusion 272 Notes 280 Bibliography 316 Index 330 Empty Space, Urban Anxiety, and the Recovery of the Public Self

Pathologies of Modern Space traces the rise of agoraphobia and ties its astonishing growth to the emergence of urban modernity. In contrast to traditional medical conceptions of the disorder, Kathryn Milun shows that this anxiety is closely related to the emergence of "empty urban space": homogenous space, such as malls and parking lots, stripped of memory and tactile features. Pathologies of Modern Space is a compelling cultural analysis of the history of medical treatments for agoraphobia and what they can tell us about the normative expectations for the public self in the modern city.