Exhaustion: A History

by Anna Katharina Schaffner

Today our fatigue feels chronic; our anxieties, amplified. Proliferating technologies command our attention. Many people complain of burnout, and economic instability and the threat of ecological catastrophe fill us with dread. We look to the past, imagining life to have once been simpler and slower, but extreme mental and physical stress is not a modern syndrome. Beginning in classical antiquity, this book demonstrates how exhaustion has always been with us and helps us evaluate more critically the narratives we tell ourselves about the phenomenon.

Medical, cultural, literary, and biographical sources have cast exhaustion as a biochemical imbalance, a somatic ailment, a viral disease, and a spiritual failing. It has been linked to loss, the alignment of the planets, a perverse desire for death, and social and economic disruption. Pathologized, demonized, sexualized, and even weaponized, exhaustion unites the mind with the body and society in such a way that we attach larger questions of agency, willpower, and well-being to its symptoms. Mapping these political, ideological, and creative currents across centuries of human development, Exhaustion finds in our struggle to overcome weariness a more significant effort to master ourselves.

Genres: History, Psychology, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Philosophy, Health, Sociology

304 pages, Hardcover

Published June 21, 2016

Reviews

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book charts the history of exhaustion from antiquity to modern times. The author, Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner, writes at great length about the symptoms of exhaustion such as stress, depression and Chronic Fatigue syndrome. I found that the book reads like a doctoral paper, very dense and dry, but still held interesting information. The biggest idea I learned is exhaustion has always been with us, it is not a modern problem. I just assumed that because of modern technology and problems, exhaustion was just a recent problem. This book does have its controversy because of her conclusions about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I tried to read it with a open mind.

[Grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

Though the novel falls into the category of nonfiction, it inadequately discusses the topic material, gathering information from biased sources and drawing hesitant and indecisive “conclusions”. Schaffner does gather historical information that may have been valid at the time but often fails to show its relevancy today. The majority of the “scientific” sources she includes are both invalid and outdated. A wide portion of the writers she includes make outrageous claims and provide no support to back them. Aside from her poorly gathered support, the book appears to be written for the general public to inform them of lethargy, and yet, Schaffner peppers her writing with advanced vocabulary, decreasing the book’s readability. Aside from that, the book provided a slow and dull read, and the parts I actually enjoyed reading were scarcely Schaffner’s own writing.

Perhaps an individual interested in the field of history would enjoy this book, as it provides more a collection of historical and modern writings rather than a book exploring the nature and influence of tiredness. Though perhaps the title Exhaustion: A History alludes to this nature, it does little to describe the irrelevancy of the unsupported sources included in this book. While I am not hugely focused on facts, I required evidence or statistics to support outlandish ideas and scientific claims. Though the book has the redeeming qualities of the included quote, anecdotes, and the collection of varying historical sources into one book, I would scarcely recommend an individual partake in reading this “study”.

[_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book combines a number of my interests, including psychology, the history of medicine, and literature. The text focuses on the history of depression, neurasthenia, acedia, or melancholy, as it has been called throughout the ages. It covers some of the same ground as Scott Stossel's My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind, only with literary allusions instead of personal anecdotes.
I appreciated the discussion of exhaustion in a historical and literary context, and was going to give this book five stars, until the part about ME. I'm no expert on the illness, but I felt that it was discussed in a rather dismissive tone. The stated purpose of the author was to describe types of exhaustion that aren't caused by a specific physical health issue, so the inclusion of chronic fatigue syndrome had problematic implications.
While there were many allusions to classic literature and philosophy, the book lacked the voices of contemporary suffers of conditions that can cause exhaustion. There was no mention of spoon theory, a concept which is surprisingly similar to Beard's nervous bankruptcy. I've often thought that there is nothing intuitive about using spoons as a measure of energy as opposed to say, batteries, but it's relatively timeless compared to the specific metaphors used in other eras.
Overall, I think this book would have been an excellent cultural history of exhaustion and depression up until the mid-twentieth century. The discussion of current manifestations of those conditions would have been better expanded or omitted.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was about a lot of things, but I feel like exhaustion wasn't really one of them. It seemed to deal much more heavily on depression and it's history and how it has affected popular culture than exhaustion.
I feel like this could have been tightened up in editing a lot more. It seemed slightly rambling and sometimes felt like it lost track of whatever point it was trying to make.

**I received this copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I’d known about this book before I finished writing my own book about depression. Oh well.

[Margaret Heller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very good literary history of exhaustion, but less convincing on the medical or political front. The societal view of the nature of exhaustion changes through the ages, and it's a complex topic that (at least in this book) is best captured in fiction and memoir. The struggle between whether exhaustion (in whatever way you define it) is due to external forces or to weakness of will is still a conversation we constantly have, and the illustration of that struggle is the most useful feature of this book. It was reviewed in The New Republic, and I would recommend that review as a companion piece to the book.

[Sasha Boersma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was so looking forward to this book after hearing the author in a radio interview. But it wasn't what I was expecting.

I had hoped for a historical, sociological look at exhaustion. The references in the book were actually more philosophical and literary.

It was ok.