Discipline and Superiority: Neurasthenia and Masculinity in the Hungarian Medical Discourse

Magos, Gergely (2025) Discipline and Superiority: Neurasthenia and Masculinity in the Hungarian Medical Discourse. HUNGARIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW: NEW SERIES OF ACTA HISTORICA ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARIUM HUNGARICAE, 14 (4). pp. 588-614. ISSN 2063-8647

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Abstract

“The nerve is still a mystery, which is why neurasthenia is in vogue,” wrote Viktor Cholnoky, the renowned Hungarian writer in 1904.1 Indeed, neurasthenia, a mental disorder considered a typically male ailment, was at the forefront of medical discourses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, yet so far, it has largely escaped the attention of Hungarian medical historians. Neurasthenia can be interpreted through multiple analytical frameworks, and connections can be drawn between neurasthenia and experiences of modernization, nationalism, and social inequalities; the emergence of the middle class and consumer society; and the professionalization of psychology, among other factors. This paper aims to explore how neurasthenia, as a male mental disorder, was discussed in the Hungarian medical discourse in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that this medical concept contributed to the medicalization of male sexuality and also reinforced the existing social gender hierarchy. Male sexuality and male social roles are the focus of the paper, but I also briefly explore how anxieties over modernity and the perceived decline of the nation were linked to other male mental disorders, such as paralysis progressiva.

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