The Depolarization and Realization of Rivers and Yealland in Chapter 22 of Regeneration by Pat Barker

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Chapter 22 in the novel Regeneration by Pat Barker is very significant to the development of the character Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, through the symbol of control throughout the book. In this chapter, Rivers returns to his home after witnessing Dr. Lewis Yealland’s horrific treatment of his patient Callan through the use of electrotherapy. Being displaced by the incident, Rivers finds it difficult to do any work because throughout the night recollections of the treatment continue to haunt him. After deciding to go to sleep, Rivers has a nightmare where he is treating a patient with electroshock therapy, just as Yealland did, except after attempting to shove the electrode into the patient’s mouth several times, he realizes that what he is holding is not an electrode, but a horse’s bit. Rivers awakens and reflects on this dream, noting that instead of trying to cure a patient of mutism by stimulating the patient with electroshock therapy, he was really trying to get his patient to stop speaking, and to rather become mute. The passages in chapter 22 serves to force the reader to question wether or not Rivers and Yealland are actually helping their patients, as well as to develop Dr. Rivers’s character by showing how he and Yealland are quite similar despite their differences in treatment through the exhibition of the element of control that both of these characters possess.
In the beginning of chapter 22, Rivers is obviously horrified by Yealland’s treatment of Callan: “As he read through what he’d written, he became aware that he was being haunted by images. The man in the corridor at Queen Square, Yealland’s hands, Callan’s open mouth, the two figures, doctor and patient, walking up and down, in and out of the circle of light round the b...

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...ss. Psychiatrists during World War I, including Rivers and Yealland, aim to achieve, either directly or indirectly, the curing of their patients to the degree necessary in order to justify their return to the battlefield; not for the sake of their mental stability. Both Rivers and Yealland are also very similar in terms of the degree of control and influence they have over their respective patients. While Yealland’s treatments are extremely radical, and Rivers’s are more conventional, they do necessarily achieve the same thing through the great amount of power they have. Chapter 22 gives readers important insight on what Rivers, Yealland, and other psychiatrists actually, instead of superficially, accomplish, as well as affiliating Rivers with Yealland; two characters that might appear to be polarized initially, that actually have more similarities than differences.

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