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

Abstract

Interest in the history of military psychiatry has intensified during the past two decades. Writers have tended to focus on circumstances affecting a single armed force during a single conflict—notably Britain and Germany in World War I, and the United States following the Vietnam War. The treatment of psychogenic trauma has attracted the most attention. Ben Shephard's book stands out from previous studies in several respects. It spans eighty years and includes the two world wars, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, and the wars in the Falklands and the Persian Gulf, although most of the book concerns British, American, and German psychiatry during the world wars. While First World War psychiatry has been the object of considerable scholarly attention, the treatment of psychiatric casualties in the Second World War is less well explored—until now at least, for nearly half of A War of Nerves is devoted to this war.