In western countries, paths to modernity created socio-cultural conditions conducive to the dissemination of the language of nerves. This book examines historically the ways in which neurosis became a contagious diagnosis in Sweden, attaining the status of a national malady.

A study of Modernist utopias of the mind. This book examines the psychodynamic writings of Otto Gross, C G Jung, Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm. It argues, utopianism became increasingly important to the fundamental ambitions of all four thinkers, and places the 'utopian impulse' with the historical context of the early twentieth century.