„Sterben Sie weise!”—Dramatisierungen der Hypochondrie in Fallerzählungen des 18. Jahrhunderts

Abstract

Autobiographical reports on hypochondriasis, now known as somatic symptom disorder or illness anxiety disorder, were common and popular in the eighteenth century. In this article, I compare and contrast two such autobiographical reports by poets with a case study by the famous philosopher and physician Marcus Herz of the well-known poet Karl Philipp Moritz, published after the latter’s death. Despite the serious subject matter, the three texts all rely on elements of the poetic genre of comedy. The article analyzes how the poet-patients linked therapy and healing to writing and imagination, while the physician paradoxically thought writing and imagination contributed to the sickness of hypochondriasis. Related topics such as the topos of the melancholic poet; laughter as a method of healing; acting, role play, and lying in dialogical therapy; as well as psychological aspects of doctor-patient-relations establish the topicality and timeliness of eighteenth-century discourse on hypochondriasis. While the practice of psychotherapy and its foundation on the interrelatedness of soma and psyche were still experimental, the first principle of a therapeutic relationship between doctor/therapist and patient/subject was already mapped out in Herz’s text. The article shows how a patient’s perspective on his own healing as well as a doctor’s perspective on the patient’s healing relied on different formal aspects of the classical poetics of drama. The “dramatic” exaggeration of sickness in hypochondriasis and the narration of its healing are thus closely modeled on formal aspects of dramatic structure. Besides their well-being, patients’ autonomy is at stake through the power of telling their own stories.