A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century

by Shephard, Ben

• ISBN13: 9780674005921
• ISBN10: 0674005929
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

A War of Nerves is a history of military psychiatry in the twentieth century--an authoritative, accessible account drawing on a vast range of diaries, interviews, medical papers, and official records, from doctors as well as ordinary soldiers. It reaches back to the moment when the technologies of modern warfare and the disciplines of psychological medicine first confronted each other on the Western Front, and traces their uneasy relationship through the eras of shell-shock, combat fatigue, and post-traumatic stress disorder. At once absorbing historical narrative and intellectual detective story, A War of Nerves weaves together the literary, medical, and military lore to give us a fascinating history of war neuroses and their treatment, from the World Wars through Vietnam and up to the Gulf War. In so doing, he answers recurring questions about the effects of war. Why do some men crack and others not? Are the limits of resistance determined by character, heredity, upbringing, ideology, or simple biochemistry? Military psychiatry has long been shrouded in misconception, and haunted by the competing demands of battle and of recovery. Now, for the first time, we have a definitive history of this vital art and science, which illuminates the bumpy efforts to understand the ravages of war on the human mind, and points towards the true lessons to be learned from treating the aftermath of war.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	xi
Acknowledgements	xiii
Introduction	xvii
Prologue: The Shock of the Shell	1	(4)
Doctors' Minds	5	(16)
Shell-Shock in France	21	(12)
Trench Work	33	(6)
The Somme	39	(14)
Psychiatry at the Front, 1917-18	53	(20)
Home Fires	73	(24)
Europeans	97	(12)
Arguments and Enigmas, 1917-18	109	(14)
`Skirting the Edges of Hell'	123	(10)
Inquests	133	(10)
`Will Peace Bring Peace?'	143	(18)
The Lessons of Shell-Shock	161	(8)
Dunkirk, the Blitz and the Blue	169	(18)
`We Can Save those Boys from Horror'	187	(18)
Front-line Psychiatry	205	(24)
New Ways of War	229	(18)
D-Day and After	247	(10)
A Tale of Two Hospitals	257	(22)
The Helmeted Airman	279	(20)
Learning from the Germans?	299	(14)
Prisoners of War	313	(12)
A Good War?	325	(14)
Vietnam Doctors	339	(16)
From Post-Vietnam Syndrome to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder	355	(14)
`When the Patient Reports Atrocities...'	369	(8)
From the Falklands to the Gulf	377	(8)
The Culture of Trauma	385	(16)
Notes	401	(68)
Select Bibliography	469	(6)
Index	475