Separating the men from the boys: Masculinity and maturity in understandings of shell shock in Britain

Twentieth Century British History

Volumn 20, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 1-22

  Meyer, Jessica ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; GENDER IDENTITY; HEALTH PERSONNEL ATTITUDE; HISTORY; HUMAN; HUMAN DEVELOPMENT; LITERATURE; MALE; POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SELF CONCEPT; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SOLDIER; UNITED KINGDOM; WAR;

ADULT; ATTITUDE OF HEALTH PERSONNEL; COMBAT DISORDERS; GENDER IDENTITY; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMAN DEVELOPMENT; HUMANS; LITERATURE, MODERN; MALE; MEDICINE IN LITERATURE; MILITARY PERSONNEL; SELF EFFICACY; SOCIAL VALUES; WORLD WAR I;

EID: 61449229323     PISSN: 09552359     EISSN: 14774674     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/tcbh/hwn028     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. Imperial War Museum, London (hereafter IWM), S.H. Raggett, 'Reminiscences of War (1914-1918)' Ts. memoir (1920), 18.
2. Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinity (London, 1994), 1
3. Michael Paris, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850-2000 (London, 2000), 62.
4. Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980 (London, 1987), Ch. 7.
5. Sandra Gilbert, 'Soldier's heart: Literary men, literary women and the Great War', quoted in Showalter, The Female Malady, 174.
6. Showalter, The Female Malady, 171.
7. Showalter, The Female Malady, 172.
8. Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914-1994 (London, 2002), 106, 107.
9. W.H.R. Rivers, Instinct and the Unconscious: A Contribution to the Biological Theory of the Psycho-Neuroses, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1922), 4, 5. Other doctors who adapted Freudian theories included Bernard Hart, William Brown and William McDougall, whose work on regression is discussed subsequently.
10. Most of the medical discussions of maturity in relation to shell shock preceded Freud's interest in development of the mind of the child from 1923 onwards. Shephard, A War of Nerves, 163.
11. Seth Koven, 'Remembering and dismemberment: Crippled children, wounded soldiers and the great war in Great Britain', American Historical Review, 99 (1994), 1167-1202
12. Wendy Jane Gagen, 'Disabling masculinity: Ex-servicemen, disability and gender identity, 1914-1930', PhD thesis, University of Essex, 2004.
13. Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London, 1996), 74.
14. Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (London, 1999), 253.
15. Laurinda Stryker, 'Mental cases: British shell shock and the politics of interpretation', in Gail Braybon (ed.), Evidence, History and the Great War: Historians and the Impact of 1914-18 (New York, 2003), 159.
16. See, among others, 'Neurasthenia and shell shock', The Lancet, 187 (1916), 627
17. G. Elliot Smith, 'Shock and the soldier', The Lancet, 187 (1916), 815
18. F. Burton-Fanning, 'Neurasthenia in soldiers of the home forces', The Lancet, 189 (1917), 907, 908.
19. John Horne, 'Masculinity in politics and war in the age of nation-states and world wars, 1850-1950', in Stefan Dudink et al. (eds), Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History (Manchester, 2004), 28.
20. Nicoletta Gullace, 'The Blood of Our Sons': Men, Women and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship During the Great War (New York, 2002)
21. Susan Grayzel, Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France During the First World War (Chapel Hill, 1999).
22. Stefan Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850-1930 (Oxford, 1991), 186, 187.
23. Martin Green, Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire (London, 1980), 267.
24. J.M. Winter, The Great War and the British People (London, 1985), 10-18.
25. Kelly Boyd, Manliness and the Boys' Story Paper in Britain: A Cultural History (Basingstoke, 2003), 50.
26. Paris, Warrior Nation.
27. Dawson, Soldier Heroes, 1.
28. M.L. Walkington, Twice in a Lifetime (London, 1980), 18.
29. IWM, R.G. Dixon, 'The Wheels of Darkness', Ts. memoir, c.1970, 4.
30. W. Griffith, Up to Mametz (London, 1981, first published 1931), 21.
31. IWM, E.B. Lord, Ts. memoir, nd., 28.
32. IWM, J.W. Barnett, Ts. diary, 29 Apr 1914.
33. IWM, J.F.B. O'Sullivan, Letter to Mother, 10-13 Sep 1916.
34. Jessica Meyer, '"Gladder to be going out than afraid": Shellshock and Heroic masculinity in Britain, 1914-1919', in Jenny Macleod and Pierre Purseigle (eds), Uncovered Fields: Perspectives in First World War Studies (Leiden, 2004), 195-210.
35. John Tosh, 'What should historians do with masculinity? Reflections on nineteenth-century Britain', History Workshop Journal, 38 (1994), 183.
36. Collini, Public Moralists, 97.
37. Showalter, The Female Malady, 3, 4.
38. Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined: The First World War in English Culture (London, 1991), 16, 17.
39. Winter, The Great War and the British People, 6.
40. Hynes, A War Imagined, 20.
41. Winter, The Great War and the British People, 59.
42. Winter, The Great War and the British People, 16.
43. 'A discussion of shell shock', The Lancet, 187 (1916), 306.
44. Smith, 'Shock and the soldier', 853.
45. Smith, 'Shock and the soldier', 853.
46. 'Neurasthenia in the soldier', 962.
47. Judson S. Bury, 'Remarks on the pathology of war neuroses', The Lancet, 192 (1918), 98.
48. Shepard, A War of Nerves, 38.
49. Shepard, A War of Nerves, 47.
50. William McDougall, 'Four cases of "Regression" in Soldiers', Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 15 (1920/1), 136.
51. McDougall, 'Four cases', 154.
52. McDougall, 'Four cases'.
53. McDougall, 'Four cases', 137.
54. McDougall, 'Four cases', 147.
55. McDougall, 'Four cases', 144.
56. McDougall, 'Four cases', 148.
57. McDougall, 'Four cases', 138.
58. McDougall, 'Four cases', 140.
59. McDougall, 'Four cases', 141.
60. McDougall, 'Four cases', 141.
61. Pat Barker, Regeneration (London, 1992), 223-33.
62. Showalter, The Female Malady, 176.
63. Showalter, The Female Malady, 177.
64. John Tosh, 'Authority and nurture in fatherhood', in his Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth Century Britain: Essays on Gender, Family and Empire (Harlow, 2005), 132-5.
65. E.D. Adrian and L.R. Yealland, 'The treatment of some common war neuroses', The Lancet, 189 (1917), 869.
66. Lewis R. Yealland, Hysterical Disorders of Warfare (London, 1918), 7,
67. cited in Showalter, The Female Malady, 176.
68. Bourke, Dismembering the Male, 94
69. and Shephard, A War of Nerves, 42, 43.
70. Similar conflicts in the role of medical men in the armed forces existed in France, as discussed by Marc Roudebush, 'A patient fights back: neurology in the court of public opinion in france during the First World War', Journal of Contemporary History, 35 (2000), 29-38.
71. McDougall, 'Four cases', 141.
72. McDougall, 'Four cases', 147. Suggestive methods of treatment included hypnosis, psychoanalysis and re-education.
73. Laurinda Stryker, 'Languages of suffering and sacrifice in England in the First World War', PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1992, 7.
74. Showalter, The Female Malady, 178.
75. Bourke, Dismembering the Male, 14.
76. Shephard, A War of Nerves, 73.
77. The term 'middlebrow', in popular use between the 1920s and 1950s, defines a wide range of literature. While an exact definition of the middlebrow novel remains the subject of debate, Rosa Maria Bracco has described such books as 'those novels and plays which made no attempt to go beyond or, as the writers themselves would have put it, to deviate from comfortably familiar presentations'. Rosa Maria Bracco, Merchants of Hope: British Middlebrow Writers and the First World War, 1919-1939 (Oxford, 1993), 10. Generally written by middle-class authors, depicting middle-class ideals, such novels were marked by traditional forms of narrative and engagement with contemporary social themes. As such, they serve as an accessible source for cultural historians of the period.
78. James Hilton, Random Harvest (London, 1975, first published 1941), 341.
79. Hilton, Random Harvest, 75-6.
80. Hilton, Random Harvest, 90.
81. Hilton, Random Harvest, 107.
82. Hilton, Random Harvest, 15, 16.
83. Carl Rollyson, Rebecca West: The Saga of the Century (London, 1995), 49.
84. Chas. A. Mercier, 'Functional nervous disease: Letter to the editor', The Lancet, 187 1916), 154.
85. Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (London, 1980), 89.
86. West, Return of the Soldier, 183.
87. West, Return of the Soldier, 187.
88. West, Return of the Soldier, 188.
89. West, Return of the Soldier, 147.
90. Showalter, The Female Malady, 191.
91. I would like to thank George Simmers for drawing my attention to this text.
92. Warwick Deeping, Kitty (London, 1931, first published 1927), 12.
93. Deeping, Kitty, 41.
94. Deeping, Kitty, 50.
95. Deeping, Kitty, 107.
96. Deeping, Kitty, 169.
97. Deeping, Kitty, 165, 166.
98. Deeping, Kitty, 358.
99. Jessica Meyer, '"Not Septimus Now": Wives of disabled veterans and cultural memory of the First World War in Britain', Women's History Review, 13 (2004), 117-37.
100. Deeping, Kitty, 112.
101. Tosh, 'Authority and nurture in fatherhood', 136.
102. Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Long Weekend: A Social History of Great Britain 1918-1939 (New York, 1963, first published 1940), 17.
103. The National Archive: Public Record Office, London, PIN 26/21651, A. Gear, Letter to the Secretary, Officers' Branch, Ministry of Pensions, 1929; PIN 26/21097, C.F. Ambler, Letter to the Ministry of Pensions, 13 May 1932.
104. Showalter, The Female Malady, 190-1.