The Age of Nerves

By Jacob Barnard.

Originally submitted as an assessment for The History of Emotions.

What do you picture when I say the phrase 'nervous breakdown'? What does a nervous person look like? Someone possibly twitching, tired, restless, stressed, shouting, or saying nothing at all. We can all agree that ‘being’ nervous or ‘having a nervous breakdown' creates both a physical and mental experience. In some ways, it is a natural reaction to our external environment, which can result in butterflies, sweating, headaches. You can’t help but feel nervous before an exam or your wedding, especially a driving test and all sorts of personal day to day experiences. But if you have nothing to be nervous about then you can’t be nervous? I could associate several symptoms of nerves to other emotions.  Being nervous represents a whole host of different experiences. Nervousness was popular at the turn of the 20th century, typically in the western hemisphere, and was thought to be brought on by the strains of modern life. Modern life created nervous strain in reaction to our culture and environment.  Like many other basic emotion, nervous has an element of internal regulation, which has both a cultural and biological resonance too.

Nervous illness of many kinds were essential in scientific study of human life. Elizabeth Green’s Nervous Conditions : Science and the Body Politic in Early Industrial Britain has a wonderful chapter titled The Nervous Man of Science. In this chapter, she discusses how leading scientists such James Watt and Lord Kelvin suffered from nervous illnesses, notably Neurasthenia. This was widespread throughout science professionals of the 19th and 20th century. It sparked an inward look into the inner dimensions of the human body and how you go about combating these negative feelings. These led to conclusions that a well maintained nervous system was a model for scientific and social organisation. Fast forward to 2019 and I may now use words such as anxious, stressed or worried. This is because the broad emotional experiences of nervous led to further discoveries in human experience and the linguistics of new emotional words and standards.

The 20th century; the age of technology, science, and violent warfare. It was also the ‘age of nerves’. Historians link the emergence of nervousness to modernity and the added strains that modern life brought. Which had physical effects on the nervous system. Strains came from urbanisation; louder city noises, growing populations, new optical pressures. New roles of families, work and children.

The 20th century set new emotional standards. These standards were rooted in the new experiences of urbanisation. The ‘new age’ changed the way that scientists and philosophers thought about the human body. American Neurologist George Miller Beard popularised the word and illness Neurasthenia in 1869, which translated to ‘strain of the nerves’, and symptoms included exhaustion, a variety of pains, alterations in the senses, ‘morbid fears’, impairments in cognitive functioning, and alterations in mood. Further, Neurasthenia was considered an illness that affected the mind and the body, but only those who were educated and intelligent. Another of those ‘white mans burdens’ so to speak, it was thought that only the well-educated elites, could ‘fall ill’ with Neurasthenia. But the 20th century changed this impression of’ ‘nerve’ emotions, as emotional standards shifted. Rhodri Hayward, British Historian, also exemplifies the shift in emotional standards for working class dwellers living in urban areas in his article; Busman’s stomach and the embodiment of modernity.

I mention Neurasthenia so that we can understand the linguistic purpose of nervous. The 20th century period was certainly skeptical of mental health and the popularisation of nervousness offered a non-medical, self-diagnosing feeling or emotion. One that was less serious than Neurasthenia and not explicitly for the educated class. It provided an answer to the experiences of the ‘common people’ and highlights the importance class has on our emotional expression. 'Nervous’ role as an emotion is embedded in a narrative of progress and with this progress not only comes added external pressure, but greater freedoms for groups of individuals that previously had no such liberties. Therefore, the concept of nervousness itself sort to captivate a wide range of emotional experiences from a wide range of 20th century peoples.

With the 20th century well underway, nervousness found itself in popular culture of the western hemisphere, especially America. The American Medical Journals wrote hundreds of essays on how to avoid a nervous breakdown and anti-noise leagues were established in Britain. Japan blamed Europeanisation for its fluctuation in nervous illness. It truly was ‘the age of the nerves’. Emotives have some value here, as nervousness is empirical evidence that cultures impact your emotional feeling and expression. They could be referred to as ‘biocultural’,which Rob Boddice, discusses in his book The History of Emotions. Boddice expands on how ‘blushing’ is a natural bodily reaction, but it is not without culture. Human emotions are culturally bound. Blushing can be from anger, embarrassment, sadness and many more emotions, but emotional standards of society dictate that we cannot (you shouldn’t) lash out publicly in anger, therefore our body internalises the experience in reactions such as blushes. This helps explain the concept of being nervous. Some attributes to being nervous are natural physical experiences but they are dependent on the emotional standards of cultures and societies. Nervousness matched the emotional standards of the 20th century. It was able to describe countless non-medical, negative physical symptoms that were a consequence of modernity.

'Nervous' is a really useful emotional word and experience for historians to study. Modern science is the founder of ideas like natural selection and evolution. I don’t need to get my GCSE revision guide out to tell you that our bodies react to our environments in order to stay alive; adapt and evolve. Survival of the fittest!  Many emotions cause chemical impulses and reactions in our bodies, and being nervous certainly does. Usually to imply something’s wrong. So if emotions are reactions to our external environments, then the words themselves are nothing more than just linguistic tools that meet the needs of our cultures?

You could say that nervous is conceptually rather a pointless word! Understanding the concepts of words and their meaning is key to understanding emotion words.

The 1960s saw the decline of nervousness in association with anything medically serious. It’s lack of medical weight set a new standard of emotional expression for human beings. They could express themselves in ways that weren’t necessarily considered 20th century neurosis or psychosis(mental illness), therefore a greater dialogue was created in terms of humans and how they discussed there emotions. The stigma associated with mental health was fading with the help of words and emotions such as 'nervous'. It was a word that held resonance in all classes and genders and allowed scientists and doctors to understand the modern world more. This understanding has led to a linguistic and conceptual change in the usage of the word nervous. Of course, nervous is not without meaning! But if we consider 20th century nervousness, we could say that anyone experiencing it could have been depressed, sad, tired or stressed (there were 3 dozen symptoms in America medical journals!). The 21st century seems to have taken a shining to alternative words that are embedded in the ‘narrative’ of our progress. Words like stress and anxiety carry political and medical emphasis in contemporary culture. So with the age of the nerves over, what will be next?

Suggested Readings:

-Megan Barke, Rebecca Fribush and Peter N. Stearns Journal of Social History, Vol. 33, No. 3, Oxford University Press, 2000.

-Rob Boddice, The History of Emotions, Manchester Press, 2018.

-Elizabeth Green, Nervous Conditions: Science and the Body Politic in Early Industrial Britain, New York Press, 2006.

-Rhodri Hayward Busman’s stomach and the embodiment of modernity.

-Junko Kitanaka, Depression in Japan:Psychiatric Cures for a Society in Distress, Princeton University Press, 2012.

-James G. Mansell, The Age of Noise in Britain, Hearing Modernity, University of Illinois Press, 2017.

-William M. Reddy, Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions,(Found on Google Scholar on 16/12/19).

-John Wilson Thinking With Concepts, Cambridge Press, 1970. (0.14p on Amazon).

-Yucel Yanikdag, Healing the Nation Prisoners of War, Medicine and Nationalism in Turkey, Edinburgh University Press, 2013.

-Nerves and the War Source: Scientific American,Vol. 112, No. 10, Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc, 1915.