Treating and preventing trauma : British military psychiatry during the Second World War

Thalassis, N

Abstract

This is a study of military psychiatry in the Second World War. Focusing
on the British Army, it recounts how the military came to employ
psychiatrists to revise recruitment procedures and to treat psychiatric
casualties. The research has shown that psychiatry was a valued specialty
and that psychiatrists were given considerable power and independence.
For example, psychiatrists reformed personnel selection and placed
intelligence testing at the centre of the military selection of personnel.
Psychiatrists argued that by eliminating the 'dull and backward' the tests
would help improve efficiency, hygiene, discipline and morale, reduce
psychiatric casualties and establish that the Army was run in a meritocratic
way. However, it is probable that intelligence testing made it less likely
that working-class men would receive commissions.
Still, the Army had no consistent military doctrine about what the
psychiatrists should be aiming for -to return as many psychiatric casualties
to combatant duties as was possible or to discharge men who had found it
impossible to adapt to military life. In the initial stages of the war, the
majority of casualties were treated in civilian hospitals in Britain, where
most were discharged. This was partly because the majority were regarded
as constitutional neurotics. When psychiatrists treated soldiers near the
front line most were retained in some capacity. The decision on whether to
evacuate patients was influenced by multiple factors including the patients'
military experience and the doctors' commitment to treatment or selection.
Back in Britain, service patients were increasingly more likely to be
treated in military hospitals such as Northfield -famous for the 'Northfield
experiments'. These provided an alternative model of military psychiatry in
which psychiatric intervention refocused away from individuals and their
histories and onto social relationships, and where the psychiatrists' values
were realigned with the military rather than with civilian general medicine.

Citation

Thalassis, N. Treating and preventing trauma : British military psychiatry during the Second World War. (Thesis). University of Salford, UK

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jun 29, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 29, 2009
• Additional Information: Additional Information : PhD supervisor: Professor John Keiger
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2004