Lynch, Peter John;
(1977)
The Exploitation of Courage: psychiatric care in the British Army 1914-1918.
Masters thesis (M.Phil), University of London.
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Abstract
An explanation of the unprecedented number of psychological casualties recorded in the First World War must find its beginning in the jarring disparity between the idealism of the soldiers and the horrifying reality of their war. Likewise, the roots of an explanation for official attitudes and responses to the war neuroses can be seen in the frustration of the Army’s expectations of the War and of their men. Hysteria, neurasthenia and traumatic neurosis were the direct nosological ancestors of "shell shock" and the war neuroses. Medical responses to the functional disorders of the Great War relied heavily on pre-War therapy and theory. Most of the major controversies about functional illness, including the relative importance of physical and psychical trauma, and the role of a "neuropathic predisposition," continued into the War years. The development of official policy was greatly influenced by military distrust of functional conditions. Their potential for abuse by "malingerers," their close correlation with morale, and above all the Army’s concern with the minimization of "wastage,” meant that shell shock was largely ignored until its increase in late 1916. Following the establishment of special treatment centres in 1917s the Army’s tendency was to resist the evaluation and treatment of these conditions as psychological problems; they preferred to give official recognition only to functional sequelae of high-explosive artillery concussions. The final chapter of this thesis demonstrates the interaction of medical investigation and the values of military authority. The three main British writers on the war neuroses concentrated on certain aspects of the disorders which lay at the core of medical debate: predisposition and physical trauma, psychical trauma and psychopathology. A consideration of the role of psychiatry in modern prisons, means of treating the individual "social deviant," in comparison with the role of medical psychology in the Army, as a means of treating the individual "military deviant," sheds light on the tension between the doctors and their superiors The medical ideal of treatment, and its concern for the individual, clashed with the institutional ideals of punishment and deterrence, omy lay at the centre of the difficulties which medical psychology encountered in a military setting, and clearly influenced both the analysis and the treatment of the war neuroses.
| Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | M.Phil |
| Title: | The Exploitation of Courage: psychiatric care in the British Army 1914-1918 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10200160 |
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