Susannah B. Mintz, "Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story" (Reaktion, 2026)

Mar 15, 2026

Susannah B. Mintz, Professor of English and author exploring literary, historical, and philosophical approaches to health anxiety. She reframes hypochondria as communication and creative potential. Conversations touch on historical meanings, modern diagnoses, temporality called hip time, epistemologies of illness, and links between disease anxiety, identity, and aging.

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INSIGHT

Hypochondria As A Mode Of Being

Hypochondria can be a mode of being rather than a pathology, revealing limits of certainty in embodied experience.
Susannah B. Mintz argues COVID showed how health anxiety can have protective and epistemic value, prompting tolerance for ambiguity.

insights

INSIGHT

Historical Evolution Of Hypochondria

The meaning of hypochondria shifted across history from visceral disorder to psychiatric categories like Illness Anxiety Disorder and Somatic Symptom Disorder.
Mintz traces origins in Greek anatomy, Burton's melancholia, Boswell and Darwin's gut-linked worries, and 21st-century DSM redefinitions.

insights

INSIGHT

Hypochondria As Communication

Reframe hypochondria as communication: it signals needs for empathy, care, and recalibration of social priorities.
During COVID Mintz read Defoe and saw health anxiety as collective utterance that reshapes authority, time, intimacy, and caretaking.

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Why Mintz Wrote About Hypochondria

02:00 • 5min

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What Hypochondria Has Meant Historically

06:46 • 5min

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Modern Diagnoses: IAD and Somatic Symptom Disorder

12:07 • 7min

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Hypochondria as Communication

19:19 • 4min

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Hip Time: Hypochondria and Temporality

23:44 • 8min

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Hip Epistemology: Knowledge from Illness

32:10 • 6min

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Hypochondria, Borders, and National Identity

38:14 • 4min

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Biases, Gaslighting, and Medical Inequity

42:06 • 4min

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Aging, Hypochondria, and Revaluing Frailty

46:04 • 5min

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Takeaways: Toward Equanimity with Illness

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Hypochondria

In Sickness and in Story

Susannah B. Mintz

Susannah B. Mintz's 'Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story' rethinks hypochondria across history, literature, medical discourse, and philosophy to argue that health anxiety can be generative rather than merely pathological. The book traces the term's evolution from visceral explanations in early modern texts through 19th-century invalid culture to contemporary psychiatric diagnoses like Illness Anxiety Disorder. Mintz proposes concepts such as 'hip time' and 'hip epistemology' to show how hypochondriacal attention reshapes experiences of time, knowledge, identity, aging, and community. She explores how hypochondria can challenge medical authority, reveal social biases in healthcare, and offer alternative forms of communication and creativity. The work aims to reduce stigma and invite more compassionate, nuanced responses to embodied uncertainty.

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Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story (Reaktion, 2026) proposes a bold reimagining of a frequently dismissed condition. Dr. Susannah B. Mintz reframes health anxiety not as a pathology but as a site of creative potential – exploring hypochondria as a form of communication, a reorientation to time, a convergence of personal and communal identity, a declaration of bodymind needs and an embrace of ageing’s transformations. Far-ranging in its attention to historical periods, national literatures, philosophical thought and medical discourse, the book challenges the containment of suffering within narratives of professional authority. In doing so, it seeks to dispel shame and stigma, opening space for new forms of connection and understanding through a deeper attentiveness to the experience of illness.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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