“Why Are They Not Cured?” British Shellshock Treatment During the Great War

Abstract

The current interest in the psychiatric disorders of the Great War dates back to three innovative and very different studies of the 1970s: The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell, The Face of Battle by John Keegan, and Eric Leed's study of combat and identity No Man's Land . The focus of these studies was the personal experience of war, especially but not exclusively the Great War; the assumptions and understanding brought to it and, often, the damage and loss that result. A second group of studies emerged in the middle and late 1980s, including more specialized works on psychological medicine, feminist interpretation, as well as two extended pieces of research on the British experience. Snowball-like, the chapters presented in the final sections of Traumatic Pasts illustrate the development of comparative and postwar studies, although other issues, such as the experience of war neurotic ex-servicemen and the much wider theme of Great War psychological trauma as a pathology of modernity, are open to further exploration. The Great War and the British soldiers' experience of that war were the starting point for these developments, the studies of the 1970s particularly helped establish a framework within which more recent debates have taken place, and for that reason I want to review the British experience.