“Entrenched from Life”: The Impossible Reintegration of Traumatized French Veterans of the Great War

Abstract

After the psychological wounds experienced in the trenches, men continued to suffer emotional damage in postwar society, where they were stigmatized by civilians who did not know how to cope with their invisible injuries. Marie Derrienanalyzes mentally disabled soldiers’ experiences in postwar French society, building on, but also moving beyond, scholarship that has so far mostly focused on 1914–1918. Because doctors did not come to terms with the reality of war-induced traumatic neurosis, they continued to treat ‘hysteria’ as a hereditary illness, and thus men were stigmatized as chronic burdens. Derrien’s essay delves beyond just the medical and political battles over recovery and treatment. She finds their voices through veterans’ newspapers, which document how men rebelled against how they were treated.