Shell-shock in death of a hero

This paper investigates the psychological trauma precipitated by war in Death of a Hero, a semi-autobiographical novel by Richard Aldington, the veteran who served as a soldier in World War I. So, the writer himself witnessed the appalling horrors of war and turned them into a novel. This reveals how the war horrors shatter the sensitive artist psychologically and drive him to commit suicide. Although this novel departs from historical details in the protagonist’s tragic end, it offers a pathetic description of the writer’s agonies which transgresses its setting; i.e., England World War I, and presents a Mankind’s dilemma everywhere. As a narrative, this novel pauses upon the hero’s psychological sufferings in the midst of a fragmented family which represents the British dissolute society at that time, and shows their effects in developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder later on. That society was akin to another wasteland. The paper adopts a psychoanalytic approach as it attempts to penetrate into the hero’s traumatic experiences. Hence emerges the significance of such a psychoanalytic approach.

Shell Shock: The Response of UK Neurology

The neurological and psychological manifestations of trauma, confinement, and terror became apparent throughout Europe as soldiers were evacuated from the trenches of the Western Front. The response in the UK evolved as a result of the experience of medical staff embedded with the troops in base hospitals and the philosophy of those treating returned soldiers in specialist establishment. There were widely disparate approaches to the management encompassing simple supportive care, a psychanalytic approach and radical electric shock therapy. The latter was partially driven by the Queen Square experience in the UK but was also concurrently widely pursued throughout Europe. With experience, care was increasingly undertaken close to the front lines using a philosophy of immediacy and expectation of recovery. Post-war analysis was startlingly unsympathetic, yet the experiences and management of <i>shell shock</i> have guided psychiatric and medical understanding of functional illness and post-traumatic stress over the subsequent century. In this historical review, we have sought to present features of the UK response to the neurological manifestations of trauma, the way in which these changed as the war proceeded and the political and medical response in the aftermath of war.

Elton Mayo and Thomas Henry Reeve Mathewson: the forgotten Australian pioneers of the treatment of patients with shell shock, neurasthenia and nervous breakdown

The contributions of Australians on shell shock are absent from the literature. However, two Australians were pioneers in the treatment of shell shock: George Elton Mayo (1880–1949) and Dr Thomas Henry Reeve Mathewson (1881–1975). They used psychoanalytic approaches to treat psychiatric patients and introduced the psychoanalytic treatment of people who suffered from shell shock. Their ‘talking cure’ was highly successful and challenged the view that shell shock only occurred in men who were malingering and/or lacking in fortitude. Their work demonstrated that people experiencing mental illness could be treated in the community at a time when they were routinely treated as inpatients. It also exemplified the substantial benefits of combining science with clinical knowledge and skill in psychology and psychiatry.

Symonds on fear and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Prominent English neurologist Sir Charles Symonds, during World War II service with the Royal Air Force, published a series of articles emphasizing the role of fear initiating psychological breakdown in combat airmen (termed Lack of Moral Fibre). Having served in a medical capacity in the previous war, Symonds re-presented the phylogenetic conceptualizations formed by his colleagues addressing ‘shell shock’. In 2013, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5) re-classified Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), removing the diagnosis from the category of Anxiety Disorders. This was the view introduced a century ago by the trench doctors of World War I and affirmed by Symonds’ clinical experience and studies in World War II.

Akustisches Gedächtnis und bruitistisches Gedenken an den Ersten Weltkrieg: das Album Lament der Einstürzenden Neubauten (2014)

Zum Gedenken an den Ersten Weltkrieg wurden in Belgien einzigartige Musikwerke in Auftrag gegeben wie Lament, Ypres oder Shell Shock, a requiem of war, eine Oper über das posttraumatische Syndrom der Frontsoldaten. Für die Gedenkfeiern in Westflandern hat die Berliner Experimental-Band Einstürzende Neubauten um Blixa Bargeld die Performance Lament im Auftrag der Regierung Westflanderns konzipiert. Lament erschien zunächst als Studioalbum, die Weltpremiere fand am 8. November 2014 in Diksmuide statt, es folgte alsbald eine Tournee mit rund 30 Konzerten in Europa und Australien bis 2018. Obwohl die Wahl deutscher Underground-Musiker verwirrend für manchen belgischen Musikkritiker sein mochte, ist das Album durch eine bedeutende Recherchearbeit geprägt: Es verbindet bruitistische Komposition und historisches Material aus Tonarchiven. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es zu untersuchen, welchen Beitrag die Musiker zur Erinnerungsarbeit an den Ersten Weltkrieg leisten, welche Herausforderungen ein Auftragswerk stellt und wie die Erwartungen des Publikums erfüllt werden.

Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier (1918)

This is the first of four chapters that deal with the theme of impossible nostos in the context of war and its aftermath. Rebecca West’s Return of the Soldier was one of the first literary responses to the Great War and to the invisible wound of shell shock. The chapter argues that West also anticipated Joyce’s Ulysses by opening a dialogue between her own generation and Homer’s Odyssey. Less explicitly than Joyce, she has appropriated key elements of Odysseus’ nostos and either rearranged or inverted them. Although the novel announces itself in its title as a story of male nostos, what immediately strikes the reader is that it is told not from the perspective of the returning soldier, or Odysseus figure, but from that of a latter-day Penelope. The chapter also argues that West’s purpose is to highlight her society’s destabilized notions of home and homecoming, and challenge the prelapsarian reading of the last summer before the war and the Ithacan images of England used to recruit fighting men and mythologize the home front.