000			01717cam a2200193 4500
001			0712667830
008			110106t2002 xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a0712667830
020			_a9780712667838
100			_aShephard, Ben
245		2	_aA war of nerves : soldiers and psychiatrists, 1914-1994
260			_aLondon _bPimlico _c2002
300			_a487 p. ; 8 pages of b&w illustrations
520			_aA War of Nerves is a history of military psychiatry in the twentieth century - an authoritative, accessible account drawing on a vast range of diaries, interviews, medical papers and official records. It reaches back to the moment when the technologies of modern warfare and the disciplines of mental medicine first confronted each other on the Western Front, and traces their uneasy relationship through the eras of 'shell-shock', combat fatigue and 'post-traumatic stress disorder'. At once absorbing historical narrative and intellectual detective story, it tells the full story of 'shell-shock'; explains the disastrous psychological aftermath of Vietnam; and shows how psychiatrists kept men fighting in Burma. But it also tries to answer recurring questions about the effects of war. Why do some men crack and others not? Are the limits of resistance determined by character, heredity, upbringing, ideology or simple biochemistry? It explores the ethical dilemmas of the military psychiatrist - the 'machine gun behind the front', as Freud called him. Finally, it looks at the modern culture of 'trauma' and compensation spawned by the Vietnam War.
650			_aMILITARY MEDICINE, history
650			_aSTRESS DISORDERS, POST-TRAUMATIC _98012
650			_aMILITARY PSYCHIATRY _917121
999			_c80081 _d80081