Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War (eBook)

Jason Crouthamel is an Associate Professor of history at Grand Valley State University, USA. He is the author of An Intimate History of the Front: Masculinity, Sexuality and German Soldiers in the First World War (2014) and The Great War and German Memory: Society, Politics and Psychological Trauma, 1914-1945 (2009). He is also the co-editor, with Peter Leese, of Traumatic Memories of World War Two and After (2016). Peter Leese is Associate Professor of History at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His publications include Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First World War (2002), Britain Since 1945: Aspects of Identity (2006). Together with Jason Crouthamel he is also the co-editor of Traumatic Memories of World War Two and After (2016).

Acknowledgments 5
Contents 7
List of Figures 10
Notes on Contributors 12
Chapter 1: Introduction 16
Historiographical Background and Methodologies 20
Organization and Themes 23
Notes 30
Part I: Battles over Representations and Perceptions of Traumatized Men 37
Chapter 2: Losing Face: Trauma and Maxillofacial Injury in the First World War 38
Background: Facial Injuries and Facial Images 42
New Faces for Old: Life with a Wounded Face 45
Putting a Face On: The Mask and Its Shortcomings 51
After One Hundred Years: Re-Discovering the Legacy 54
Notes 56
Chapter 3: Screening Silent Resistance: Male Hysteria in First World War Medical Cinematography 61
Silent Resistance? 61
Deviation by the Deviant 69
Unpleasant Feelings: Pain and Nudity 69
Undermining the Choreography of Gaits 74
Undermining the Choreography of Gazes 78
The Battle of Seale Hayne as a Means to the Dream of Re-Militarization 80
Conclusion: Agency? 85
Notes 86
Chapter 4: “Always Had a Pronouncedly Psychopathic Predisposition”: The Significance of Class and Rank in  First World War German Psychiatric Discourse 92
Mental Damage: Officers and Other Ranks 95
Diagnoses and Causes of Mental Affliction 97
The Treatment of Mentally Damaged Officers 104
Conclusion 109
Notes 111
Part II: Traumatized Civilians in the Wake of the Great War 125
Chapter 5: Violence, Trauma and Memory in Ireland: The Psychological Impact of War and Revolution on a Liminal Society, 1916–1923 126
Ireland and the Great War 128
The Irish War of Independence 133
Conclusion 139
Notes 140
Chapter 6: Gender, Memory and the Great War: The Politics of War Victimhood in Interwar Germany 150
Representations of War Damaged Men in Weimar Culture 152
The Traumatic Impact of War on Bereaved Women 155
The National Socialist Politics of “Honor” in the Third Reich 160
Conclusion 164
Notes 165
Chapter 7: Subjectivities in the Aftermath: Children of Disabled Soldiers in Britain After the Great War 174
The Emotional Scripts of Parenting 179
Relationships with Fathers 181
Relationships with Mothers 186
Generational Reversals 190
Conclusion 194
Notes 196
Chapter 8: “Entrenched from Life”: The Impossible Reintegration of Traumatized French Veterans of the Great War 201
From War to Normal Life: The Mental and Emotional Strain of Demobilization 204
Psychiatrists and Post-War Mental Disorders: A Disregarded Issue 208
Getting Out of Asylums? The Question of Reintegration After Institutionalization 212
Conclusion 216
Notes 217
Part III: Traumatized Medical Cultures 223
Chapter 9: Making Sense of War Neurosis in Yugoslavia 224
Legislation on War Neurosis 228
Psychiatric Discourse on War Neurosis 230
Unmaking Sense of War Neurosis 234
Conclusion 237
Notes 238
Chapter 10: “Everything Ruined, Which Seemed Most Stable in the World…”: The German Medical Profession, the First World War and the Road to the “Third Reich” 243
The Main Goals of German Medicine During the First World War 245
The Traumatization of German Military Medicine After 1918 247
German Civilian Medicine and Its Militarization After 1918 251
Conclusion 255
Notes 256
Chapter 11: Violence and Starvation in First World War Psychiatry: Origins of the National Socialist ‘Euthanasia’ Program 266
Psychologically Disabled Veterans: Victims of T-4 268
Military Psychiatry: Violence Against Patients 269
War Neurosis and Pension Neurosis: Battles for  Compensation 271
Wartime Starvation in Psychiatric Hospitals: Postwar Debate 273
‘Unleashing the Destruction of Unworthy Life’ 276
The Politics of Psychiatry: Social and Genetic Health, 1933–39 278
Initiating and Planning the ‘Euthanasia’ Program: the First World War as Blueprint 280
Conclusion 281
Notes 284
Part IV: A Coda on Trauma 292
Chapter 12: Toward A Global History of Trauma 293
Note 309
Suggestions for Further Reading for Chapter 12 309
Books and Articles 309
Films 314
Bibliography 315
Index 332