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Between Cowardice and Insanity: Shell Shock and the Legitimation of the Neuroses in Great Britain

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Science, Technology and the Military

Part of the book series: Sociology of the Sciences ((SOSC,volume 12/1/2))

Abstract

Traumatic war neuroses emerged as a new phenomenon during the First World War. While soldiers in earlier wars had been diagnosed as insane or suffering from nostalgia, or homesickness, these diagnoses were not thought to have been caused by the trauma of warfare (1). In contrast, the prevalence of war neuroses during World War I has been linked specifically to the circumstances of the fighting. As late as 1977, for example, a noted historian of military psychiatry commented that, in World War I, warfare had reached new heights of destruction and terror. In the early phases, optimum conditions were presented for the emergence of psychiatric casualties in that new troops were locked in intense prolonged combat with heavy concentrations of artillery fire and a high incidence of battle losses (2).

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brown University, USA

    Edward M. Brown M.D.

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  1. Edward M. Brown M.D.
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard University, USA

    Everett Mendelsohn

  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

    Merritt Roe Smith

  3. University of Bielefeld, Germany

    Peter Weingart

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© 1988 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Brown, E.M. (1988). Between Cowardice and Insanity: Shell Shock and the Legitimation of the Neuroses in Great Britain. In: Mendelsohn, E., Smith, M.R., Weingart, P. (eds) Science, Technology and the Military. Sociology of the Sciences, vol 12/1/2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2958-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2958-1_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8455-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-2958-1

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