Shell Shock Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First World War

by Leese, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780333969267
• ISBN10: 033396926X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-21
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

To the British soldiers of the Great War who heard about it, "shell shock" was uncanny, amusing, and sad. To those who experienced it, the condition was shameful, unjustly stigmatized, and life-changing. The first full-length study of the British "shell shocked" soldiers of the Great War combines social and medical history to investigate the experience of psychological casualties on the Western Front, in hospitals, and through their postwar lives. It also investigates the condition's origin and consequences within British culture.

Author Biography

Peter Leese is Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural History at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(12)
PART I DISCOVERIES	13	(36)
Shocking Modernity: Hysteria, Technology and Warfare	15	(17)
Technology and traumatic neurosis	15	(6)
The new warfare	21	(6)
Surviving trauma	27	(5)
Casualties: On the Western Front	32	(17)
Army medical practice	32	(4)
Tales from the front line	36	(3)
Discipline and the medical officer	39	(6)
War's end	45	(4)
PART II WARTIME	49	(72)
Enlistment: Army Policy, Politics and the Press	51	(17)
The enlistment of shell shock	51	(2)
Army medical policy	53	(4)
Press and political campaigns	57	(8)
Disputed definitions in wartime	65	(3)
Treatment: On the Home Front	68	(17)
The British treatment network	68	(1)
Cultures of treatment: Britain, France and Germany	69	(4)
Queen Square: disciplinary practice	73	(8)
Maghull: analytic practice	81	(4)
Patients: The Other Ranks	85	(18)
The other ranks and the Army Medical Service	85	(3)
Maghull: a mental hospital at war	88	(2)
Non-specialist treatment	90	(9)
Writing shell shock	99	(4)
Patients: The Officer Ranks	103	(18)
The officers and the Army Medical Services	103	(1)
Craiglockhart: an officers' hospital at war	104	(3)
Officers' treatment	107	(9)
Writing shell shock	116	(5)
PART III LEGACIES	121	(61)
Demobilization: On Returning Home	123	(18)
The demobilization of `shell shock'	123	(1)
The War Office Report into `Shell Shock'	124	(3)
Ministry of Pensions practice	127	(6)
The trauma of return	133	(6)
Disputed definitions after war	139	(2)
Veterans: War Neurotic Ex-Servicemen	141	(18)
Pensions in postwar society	141	(3)
The Special Medical Board system	144	(2)
Post-combat lives	146	(9)
Post-combat life patterns	155	(4)
Recall: The Great War in the Twentieth Century	159	(18)
The meaning of `shell shock' (I)	159	(2)
After 1918	161	(7)
After 1945	168	(4)
After 1989	172	(4)
The meaning of `shell shock' (II)	176	(1)
Conclusion	177	(5)
Bibliographical Note	182	(4)
Notes	186	(25)
Bibliography	211	(14)
Index	225