Article ID: CBB001212387

A Weak Spot in the Personality? Conceptualising “War Neurosis” in British Medical Literature of the Second World War (2012)

unapi

Roberts-Pedersen, Elizabeth (Author)


Australian Journal of Politics and History
Volume: 58, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 408-420


Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Part of a special issue, “War and Peace, Barbarism and Civilization in Modern Europe and Its Empires”
Language: English

Through an analysis of leading British medical journals during the Second World War, this article argues that psychiatric understandings of the war neurosis suffered by British servicemen during that conflict were predicated on a notion of the neurotic serviceman as an objective personality type predisposed to break down during the strain of wartime. By discounting the effects of traumatic war experiences in favour of an aetiology that located the genesis of psychiatric disorder within the inherently unstable individual, such an approach minimized the influence of the martial environment in favour of heredity and the events of early childhood as the ultimate arbiters of mental stability in service personnel.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001212387/

Similar Citations

Article Bogousslavsky, Julien; Tatu, Laurent; (2013)
French Neuropsychiatry in the Great War: Between Moral Support and Electricity (/isis/citation/CBB001320358/)

Book Mark C. Wilkins; (2019)
Aero-Neurosis: Pilots of the First World War and the Psychological Legacies of Combat (/isis/citation/CBB199752350/)

Thesis Wagner, Juliet Clare; (2009)
Twisted Bodies, Broken Minds: Film and Neuropsychiatry in the First World War (/isis/citation/CBB001560713/)

Article Loughran, Tracey; (2009)
Shell-Shock and Psychological Medicine in First World War Britain (/isis/citation/CBB000932788/)

Article Jones, Edgar; Woolven, Robin; Durodié, Bill; Wessely, Simon; (2004)
Civilian Morale during the Second World War: Responses to Air Raids Re-examined (/isis/citation/CBB000770530/)

Book Ana Antic; (2017)
Therapeutic Fascism: Experiencing the Violence of the Nazi New Order (/isis/citation/CBB586129991/)

Article Joaquín García-Alandete; (2020)
Rudolf Allers’ conception of neurosis as a metaphysical conflict (/isis/citation/CBB569160299/)

Article Jacobs, Marilyn; Vasilyeva, Nina; (2000)
Psychoanalysis in Russia: The Past, the Present, and the Future (/isis/citation/CBB000110064/)

Article Jones, Edgar; Wessely, Simon; (2010)
British Prisoners-of-War: From Resilience to Psychological Vulnerability: Reality or Perception (/isis/citation/CBB001030545/)

Book Roelcke, Volker; Weindling, Paul; Westwood, Louise; (2010)
International Relations in Psychiatry: Britain, Germany, and the United States to World War II (/isis/citation/CBB001250251/)

Book Copp, Terry; Humphries, Mark Osborne; (2010)
Combat Stress in the 20th Century: The Commonwealth Perspective (/isis/citation/CBB001212130/)

Article Whitlock, Tammy; (1999)
Gender, Medicine, and Consumer Culture in Victorian England: Creating the Kleptomaniac (/isis/citation/CBB000111803/)

Authors & Contributors
Jones, Edgar
Wessely, Simon
Loughran, Tracey
Mark C. Wilkins
García-Alandete, Joaquín
Maher, Max
Concepts
Psychiatry
War neuroses
World War II
World War I
Neuroses; neurotic disorders
Medicine and the military; medicine in war
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
Places
Great Britain
Germany
United States
France
Yugoslavia
Eastern Europe
Institutions
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment