A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth CenturyA 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. Ben Shephard 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. |
Contents
Doctors Minds | 5 |
ShellShock in France | 21 |
Trench Work | 33 |
The Somme | 39 |
Psychiatry at the Front 191718 | 53 |
Home Fires | 73 |
Europeans | 97 |
Arguments and Enigmas 191718 | 109 |
DDay and After | 247 |
A Tale of Two Hospitals | 257 |
The Helmeted Airman | 279 |
Learning from the Germans? | 299 |
Prisoners of War | 313 |
A Good War? | 325 |
Vietnam Doctors | 339 |
From PostVietnam Syndrome to PostTraumatic Stress Disorder | 355 |
Skirting the Edges of Hell | 123 |
Inquests | 133 |
Will Peace Bring Peace? | 143 |
The Lessons of ShellShock | 161 |
Dunkirk the Blitz and the Blue | 169 |
We Can Save those Boys from Horror | 187 |
Frontline Psychiatry | 205 |
New Ways of War | 229 |