Our own times have been characterized as an "age of anxiety," a period of insecurity, frustration, and uneasiness in which familiar guidelines have begun to disintegrate and the future seems ominous. That this experience is neither new nor unique is demonstrated in this author's historical comparison. He has employed the concepts of sensibility and emotional climate to organize the phenomena of earlier ages of anxiety and to portray the shifting relations among social conditions, irrationality, and mental disorder.Abstract Teaser