Hypochondria, Sentimental Friendship, and Same-Sex Desire in Anton Reiser

Abstract:Karl Philipp Moritz's novel Anton Reiser depicts its eponymous protagonist in a detailed pathography of a hypochondriac. Eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century medical writers considered hypochondria a physical disease with mental and emotional components. Medical and literary writers used the disease metaphorically to pathologize nonnormative behaviors, thereby promoting a moral agenda under the guise of inoculating their readers against disease. Anton Reiser is, however, quite innovative in its depiction of this disease. Despite contemporary medical writers' concerns about nonnormative gender roles and sexual behaviors and their relation to hypochondria, Anton's intense, emotional, same-sex friendships do not seem to contribute to his disease in the novel. Instead, the intense male friendships that he cultivates are based on homoerotic desire, but they are not pathologized. Though not depicted as curative, they are shown in a positive light. This article provides a detailed close reading of hypochondria in the novel and reads Moritz's text against the background of contemporary medical discourses on hypochondria and modern criticism on the novel.