Individualising the social? The history of insomnia around 1900

Abstract

Using the example of the fin-de-siècle German Reich, this article outlines how insomnia emerged as a “disease of civilisation” in an industrialising society, defined by time-specific notions, reflecting and strengthening the social norms of the time. Furthermore, it analyses the process of individualisation and flexibilisation that transferred the social struggles and economic demands of modernity onto the subject's body or soul. The history of insomnia around 1900 thus reveals a pattern of thought that shaped the understanding of the insomniac throughout the 20th century.