The collection of works by the eminent Swiss philologist and historian of ideas, Jean Starobinski (b. 1920), is united by the theme of melancholy, considered as a fact of European culture. The author traces the history of melancholy from Antiquity to the 20th century, studying both the tradition of medical examination and treatment of melancholic disorders, as well as the literary practice based on the creative reinterpretation of the melancholic experience.

Among the writers and poets whose works are analyzed from this perspective are Virgil, Ovid, Charles of Orleans, Miguel de Cervantes, Robert Burton, Carlo Gozzi, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Germaine de Staël, Søren Kierkegaard, Charles Baudelaire, Pierre-Jean Jouve, Roger Caillois, Osip Mandelstam, and many others.

"Each melancholic should be treated by first thoroughly understanding the state of their mind, their character, and habits, in order to restrain the passion that, having subdued their thought, sustains their delusion." The main task of therapy is "to destroy the obsessive idea," as expressed by Pinel. In the eyes of Esquirol and Pinel, the melancholic is a victim of an idea they have invented, which leads a parasitic existence within them. Drive out, destroy, dissolve, or explode this dominant idea, and the illness will disappear with it.