Regeneration by Pat Barker

If we have to look at regeneration as healing and more specifically, the process of healing the mind, then it implies that the patient has a mentally unstable condition and has to be helped back to a normal stable mental condition. The definition of a normal stable mental condition in every human falls within the range of this person's ability to access situations rationally and objectively, parallel with a sense of responsibility and duty towards the fellow people, the law and the social standards of the place, time and condition of the society that this person is a part of. The reaction, behavior or response to a given situation should bring balance or maintain balance in the situation for the sake of being reliable in the protection of security measures and the advancement of the generally understood purpose.

When an individual is exposed to a crises situation that causes severe shock, it can lead to a mental state which produces often unintentional, involuntary disturbing behavior. This behavior is usually connected to the specific crises which caused the shock and when this person encounters similar situations, it produces this often irrational reaction.

Every individual differs in personality and character and all are differently affected by the same crises. Among a group of people, only one may collapse mentally in a given crises. This means that the healing process involves not only dealing with the nature of the crises, but also about why this specific crisis had this effect of shock on this individual.

In this novel the author deals with the First World War’s harsh unthinkable conditions in which the soldiers had to fight. Crises were a daily part of their lives. All war conditions are crises conditions, but in this n...

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...ling, it is also his duty to his country, to prepare them ready to be boarded again.

During his last weeks, Sassoon manages to find a small cellar-like room where he could stay on his own and he starts to write a book. According to the name of the book, one can assume that he wrote a detailed description and explanation why the war went wrong and what ought to be done about it. The book's name is: "Counter-Attack".

Unwaveringly, he still holds his convictions against the war, even in front off the Assessing Board, but is convinced to not become a rebel, rather ready to return for another reason, returning to the fighting soldiers, for the fighting soldiers, ready to die.

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"You want perception; you go to a novelist not a psychiatrist."

~Sassoon.

Works Cited

Regeneration by Pat Barker