ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |23 pages
Introduction
Agoraphobia: A Discovery Mode for the Study of Empty Space as a Structure of Feeling in the Urban Commons
chapter 1|26 pages
The Disappearance of Public Space in Psychiatric Descriptions of Agoraphobia
Dr. Westphal (1871) and Dr. Boyd (1991)
chapter 5|45 pages
The Twentieth-Century Urban Commons
The Shopping Center, Laboratory of Behaviorism
chapter 7|29 pages
Alternative Treatments for the Twenty-First-Century Urban Commons
Horror Vacui, Solvitur Ambulando?