Degeneration (Nordau)

Degeneration (German: Entartung, 1892–1893) is a two-volume work of social criticism by Max Nordau.

Within this work he attacks what he believed to be degenerate art and comments on the effects of a range of social phenomena of the period, such as rapid urbanization and its perceived effects on the human body. Nordau believed degeneration should be diagnosed as a mental illness because those who were deviant were sick and required therapy. He wrote, ‘The clearest notion we can form of degeneracy is to regard it as a morbid deviation from an original type. This deviation, even if, at the outset, it was ever so slight, contained transmissible elements of such a nature that anyone bearing in him the germs becomes more and more incapable of fulfilling his functions in the world; and mental progress, already checked in his own person, finds itself menaced also in his descendants.’. These comments stemmed from his background as a trained physician, taught by the Parisian neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot.