Abstract
In 1944, Henderson’s and Gillespie’s Textbook of Psychiatry notes the ‘remarkable progress that has occurred in psychiatry in recent years in the teeth of war conditions, and even, to a limited extent, because of them’.1 The Second World War nurtures and catalyses a large number of reforms and innovations in the thought and practice of British psychiatry. Attending to the psychological casualties of the Second World War generates a huge number of interpersonally focused psychotherapeutic practices. The psychological significance of personal relationships, of adjustment to situations, of communication and social interaction become central to the linked aims of maintaining military and civilian morale on one hand, and returning psychological casualties to service as soon as possible on the other. The link between the social setting and psychological well-being is not generated by the war. However, the war does give an enormous boost to conceptions of what becomes known as the ‘psychosocial’.
Chapter PDF
Notes
D.K. Henderson and R.D. Gillespie, A Text-Book of Psychiatry for Students and Practitioners, 6th ed. Oxford, Oxford University Press (1944): vii
J. Toms, Mental Hygiene and Psychiatry in Modern Britain Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan (2013): 32–3
Department of Health, ‘Your Very Good Health’ (1948) online at: http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/NHS60/Pages/VideointroducingthenewNHS.aspx accessed 11 July 2012
J.R. Rees, The Shaping of Psychiatry by War London, Chapman & Hall (1945): 10, 33
T. Harrison, Bion, Rickman, Foulkes and the Northfield Experiments: Advancing on a Different Front London, Jessica Kingsley (2000): 27–35, 73
J.M. Mackintosh, The War and Mental Health in England New York, Commonwealth Fund (1944): 62
R. Mayou, ‘The History of General Hospital Psychiatry’ British Journal of Psychiatry 155 (1989): 770
W.S. Maclay, ‘Trends in the British Mental Health Service’ in Trends in the Mental Health Services: A Symposium of Original and Reprinted Papers H.L. Freeman and W.A.J. Farndale (eds) Oxford, Pergamon Press (1963): 4;
J.K. Wing, Reasoning About Madness Oxford, Oxford University Press (1978): 199
J. Carson and E.H. Kitching, ‘Psychiatric Beds in a General Ward: A Year’s Experience’ Lancet 1, 6559 (1949): 833
J. Pickstone, ‘Psychiatry in District General Hospitals’ in Medical Innovations in Historical Perspective J. Pickstone (ed.) (1992): 191–2
G. Wilkinson, Talking About Psychiatry London, Gaskell, (1993): 147
H.R. Guly, A History of Accident and Emergency Medicine, 1948–2004 Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan (2005): 4, xii
T.G. Lowden, ‘The Casualty Department. I. The Work and the Staff’ Lancet 270, 6929 (1956): 955
T.G. Lowden, The Casualty Department London, E. & S. Livingstone (1955): 254
J. Carson and E.H. Kitching, ‘Psychiatric Beds in a General Ward: A Year’s Experience’ Lancet 1, 6559 (1949): 833
I.R.C. Batchelor, ‘Attempted Suicide’ British Medical Journal 1, 4913 (1955): 595; see also
R.A.J. Asher, ‘Arrangements for the Mentally Ill’ Lancet 268, 6955 (1956): 1266;
N. Kessel and G. Grossman, ‘Suicide in Alcoholics’ British Medical Journal 2, 5268 (1961): 1672
P.G. Aungle, ‘Sir Ivor Batchelor’ Psychiatric Bulletin 29 (2005): 439
S. Crown, ‘Post-War Maudsley Personalities’ Psychiatric Bulletin 12(7) (1988): 264
D. Odlum, P. Epps, I.R.C. Batchelor and I.M.H. McAdam, ‘Discussion on the Legal Aspects of Suicidal Acts’ Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 51(4) (1958): 297–303
E. Stengel, ‘Attempted Suicide and the Law’ Medico-Legal Journal 27(1959): 118
I.R.C. Batchelor and M.B. Napier, ‘The Sequelae and Short-Term Prognosis of Attempted Suicide; the Results of a One-Year Follow-up of 200 Cases’ Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry 17(4) (1954): 265–6
N. Kessel, ‘Self-Poisoning — Part I’ British Medical Journal 2, 5473 (1965): 1265
D. Tait, ‘Norman Kreitman in Conversation with David Tait’ Psychiatric Bulletin 19 (1995): 298
I. Hacking, The Taming of Chance Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (1990); 65. Hacking is talking about the claims by French alienist J.E. Esquirol to cast ‘suicide as a kind of madness’.
N. Kessel, ‘Attempted Suicide’ Medical World 97 (1962): 314
E. Stengel, ‘Attempted Suicide: Its Management in the General Hospital’ Lancet 1, 7275 (1963): 234
E.F. Catford, The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh 1929–1979 Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press (1984): 159
V. Long, ‘“Often There Is a Good Deal to Be Done, but Socially Rather Than Medically”: The Psychiatric Social Worker as Social Therapist, 1945–70’ Medical History 55(2) (2011): 225
N.K. Hunnybun, ‘Psychiatric Social Work’ in Social Case-Work in Great Britain C. Morris (ed.) London: Faber and Faber (1950): 102
J. Stewart, ‘“I Thought You Would Want to Come and See His Home”: Child Guidance and Psychiatric Social Work in Inter-War Britain’ in Health and the Modern Home M. Jackson (ed.) London, Routledge (2007): 111–12; Hunnybun, ‘Psychiatric Social Work’ 105;
E. Heimler, Mental Illness and Social Work Harmondsworth, Penguin (1967): 44–5
J. Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health Geneva, World Health Organization (1951)
A. Storr, ‘Bowlby, (Edward) John Mostyn (1907–1990)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford, Oxford University Press (2004)
E. Irvine, ‘Psychiatric Social Work’ in E. Younghusband, Social Work in Britain, 1950–1975: A Follow-Up Study London, Allen & Unwin (1978): 179.
F. Post, ‘Mental Breakdown in Old Age’ British Medical Journal 1, 4704 (1951): 436–40;
F. Post and J. Wardle, ‘Family Neurosis and Family Psychosis’ British Journal of Psychiatry 108(1962): 147
E. Younghusband, Social Work in Britain, 1950–1975: A Follow-up Study London, Allen and Unwin (1978): 165
M. Jones, Social Psychiatry in Practice: The Idea of the Therapeutic Community Harmondsworth, Penguin (1968): 16–17
For an interesting account of the turn to the ‘social’ in the United States, see M.E. Staub, Madness Is Civilization: When the Diagnosis Was Social, 1948–1980 London, University of Chicago Press (2011)
G.W. Brown, E.M. Monck, G.M. Carstairs and J.K. Wing, ‘Influence of Family Life on the Course of Schizophrenic Illness’ British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine 16(2) (1962): 55–68
N. Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self London, Free Association Press (1999): 171, 175
M. Thomson, Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture, and Health in Twentieth-Century Britain Oxford, Oxford University Press (2006): 269. Thomson is describing the aspirations for a new, enlightened, psychologised sense of selfhood.
G. Eghigian, A. Killen, and C. Leuenberger, ‘The Self as Project: Politics and the Human Sciences in the Twentieth Century’ Osiris 22(1) (2007): 22
E.L. Younghusband, Social Work in Britain: A Supplementary Report on the Employment and Training of Social Workers Dunfermline, Carnegie United Kingdom Trust (1951): 81
Ministry of Health, ‘Report of the Working Party on Social Workers in the Local Authority Health and Welfare Services (Younghusband Report)’ London, HMSO (1959)
L. Faithfull, ‘Younghusband, Dame Eileen Louise (1902–1981)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford, Oxford University Press (2004)
R.M. Titmuss, ‘Community Care: Fact or Fiction?,’ in Commitment to Welfare, R.M. Titmuss (ed.) London, George Allen and Unwin ([1961] 1968): 105
A. Lewis, ‘Social Aspects of Psychiatry: Part I’ Edinburgh Medical Journal 58(5) (1951): 215
E.U.H. Pentreath and E.C. Dax, ‘Mental Observation Wards: A Discussion of Their Work and Its Objects’ Journal of Mental Science 83 (1937): 354, 364
E.N. Butler, ‘Observation Units’ Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 33 (1940): 726.
I.R.C. Batchelor and M.B. Napier, ‘The Sequelae and Short-Term Prognosis of Attempted Suicide; the Results of a One-Year Follow-up of 200 Cases’ Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry 17(4) (1954): 261;
I.R.C Batchelor and M.B. Napier, ‘Attempted Suicide in Old Age’ British Medical Journal 2, 4847 (1953): 1187;
I.R.C. Batchelor, ‘Alcoholism and Attempted Suicide’ Journal of Mental Science 100, 419 (1954): 461
E.T.O. Slater and M. Woodside, Patterns of Marriage: A Study of Marriage Relationships in the Urban Working Classes London, Cassell (1951) 14. See Chapter 4 for more on the influence of marriage guidance and PSWs in attempted-suicide studies.
I.R.C. Batchelor, ‘Management and Prognosis of Suicidal Attempts in Old Age’ Geriatrics 10(6) (1955): 292
I.R.C. Batchelor and M.B. Napier, ‘Broken Homes and Attempted Suicide’ British Journal of Delinquency 4 (1953): 99
I.R.C. Batchelor, ‘Psychopathic States and Attempted Suicide’ British Medical Journal 1, 4875 (1954): 1343
J.W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History rev. ed. New York, Columbia University Press (1999) 115
I.R.C. Batchelor, ‘Repeated Suicidal Attempts’ British Journal of Medical Psychology 27(3) (1954): 161
See M. Vicedo, ‘The Social Nature of the Mother’s Tie to Her Child: John Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment in Post-War America’ British Journal for the History of Science 44(3) (2011): 420
W.H. Trethowan, ‘Suicide and Attempted Suicide’ British Medical Journal 2, 6185 (1979): 320
Stengel’s biographical details are taken from four sources: P. Weindling, ‘Alien Psychiatrists: The British Assimilation of Psychiatric Refugees’ in International Relations in Psychiatry: Britain, Germany, and the United States to World War II V. Roelcke, P. Weindling and L. Westwood (eds) Rochester, University of Rochester Press (2010): 218–36;
U.H. Peters, ‘The Emigration of German Psychiatrists to Britain’ in 150 Years of Psychiatry: The Aftermath H.L. Freeman and G.E. Berrios (eds) London, Athlone (1996): 565–80;
F.A. Jenner, ‘Stengel, Erwin (1902–1973)’ in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford, Oxford University Press (2004);
M. Shepherd, ‘The Impact of Germanic Refugees on Twentieth-Century British Psychiatry’ Social History of Medicine 22(3) (2009): 461–9
E. Stengel, ‘On the Aetiology of the Fugue States’ Journal of Mental Science 87 (1941): 572–99;
E. Stengel, ‘Further Studies on Pathological Wandering (Fugues with the Impulse to Wander)’ Journal of Mental Science 89 (1943): 224–41
E. Stengel, ‘Suicide’ in Recent Progress in Psychiatry G.W.T.H. Fleming, A. Walk and P.K. McCowan (eds) London, J. & A. Churchill Ltd (1950): 691–703
E. Stengel, N.G. Cook and I.S. Kreeger, Attempted Suicide: Its Social Significance and Effects London, Chapman and Hall (1958): 22, emphasis in original.
V. Norris, Mental Illness in London London, Chapman & Hall (1959): 91
D.F. Early, ‘The Changing Use of the Observation Ward’ Public Health 76(5) (1962): 262
J. Marshall, ‘Mental Health Services’ British Medical Journal 2, 4902 (1954): 1484; J.B.S. Lewis, ‘Mental Health Services’ British Medical Journal 2, 4900 (1954): 1354–5
Norris, Mental Illness 234; see also, M.D. Eilenberg and P.B. Whatmore, ‘Police Admissions to a Mental Observation Ward’ Medicine, Science, and the Law 2 (1961): 96–100
J.J. Fleminger and B.L. Mallett, ‘Psychiatric Referrals from Medical and Surgical Wards’ British Journal of Psychiatry 108 (1962): 189
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This chapter is published under an open access license. Please check the 'Copyright Information' section either on this page or in the PDF for details of this license and what re-use is permitted. If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and re-use information, please contact the Rights and Permissions team.
Copyright information
© 2015 Chris Millard
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Millard, C. (2015). Communicative Self-Harm: War, NHS and Social Work. In: A History of Self-Harm in Britain. Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-52962-6_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-52962-6_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-54773-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52962-6
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)