Shell-Shock and The Beginning of Psychology

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Shell-Shock at the time of WWI is part of a dark time in the history of the entire world and is still an issue today with the soldiers coming home from the front lines. Millions of men died fighting for a territory that sometimes spanned barely a mile for years and witnessed some of the most horrific events during the war. The sheer number of cases of ‘Shell-shock' thrown up by the hellish conditions of trench warfare in the Great War, forced the military authorities, for the first time, to take combat stress seriously (N and M). It was sometimes just over looked and they were even tortured to get out of it or even killed because it was considered cowardly. The novel Regeneration, intricately interweaves fact and fiction, deriving fictive scenarios from “factual” circumstances. The scenarios of the texts are “true” the extent of the lives of the real-life characters (Harris). In the novel there were two main treatments and they were completely different. Dr.Rrivers for example used his voice and would talk it out with his patient’s, but Dr. Yealland on the other hand like when he is treating Callan used electro-shock therapy. The main point that Barker is making about the treatment given to shell shock patients is the conditions in which the men during that time were put in for their treatment based on their condition of shell shock. Rivers is the main character and doctor that deals with the patients, his first patient in the novel and main character who was a commanding officer who protests the war. I believe that knowing about Shell-shock or as we call it today, PTSD, is important in helping one better understand the book because the book is almost the first uncovering of this problem at that time to the world of the war and th... ... middle of paper ... ...ck. N.p., 2000. Web. 9 May 2014. http://pb.rcpsych.org/content/24/6/225.full N&M Press reprint (original pub 1922). Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into "Shell-shock" London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1922. Print. Smith, Tony. "Review of Regeneration." British Medical Journal 312.7039 (4 May 1996): 1171-1172. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 146. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CH1100036954&v=2.1&u=aacc_ref&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w&asid=0fabd3e9871cb57dddd87cc5164f7edc Stagner, Annessa C. "Reevaluating Society's Perception of Shell Shock." Reevaluating Society's Perception of Shell Shock: A Comparative Study Between Great Britain and the United States. West Texas State University, n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. http://ww1ha.org/shellshock.htm

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