This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. The Repression and Articulation of War Experience: A Study of the Literary Culture of Craiglockhart War Hospital Anne-Catriona Schaupp Doctor of Philosophy The University of Edinburgh 2017 2 3 Abstract* Prior study of Craiglockhart War Hospital has focused on the hospital’s two most famous patients, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, along with the work of the psychotherapist W. H. R. Rivers. Craiglockhart’s literary culture is studied in detail for the first time in this thesis and the hospital’s therapeutic ethos used as a framework by which the creative work produced at the hospital can be examined. This thesis argues that the British Army’s lack of consensus regarding the best treatment of war neuroses facilitated the development of Craiglockhart’s expressive culture, in which patients were encouraged both to articulate their wartime memories and return to purposeful activity. The hospital’s magazine, The Hydra, is examined at length; both in terms of its links to the wider genre of wartime soldier publications and as a telling document of the hospital’s therapies in action. Owen and Sassoon’s time at the hospital is also discussed, with particular emphasis on the hospital’s central importance in Owen’s poetic development and its troubling legacy in the post-war life of Sassoon. Finally, readers are introduced to George Henry Bonner, a patient of the hospital whose creative work is discussed here for the first time. This study makes clear the fact that, for the hospital’s literary-minded patients, creative endeavour was an ideal means by which to negotiate the movement away from repression to the articulation of their wartime experiences. *Lay Abstract identical 4 5 Signed Declaration I confirm that this thesis, presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, has: i) been composed entirely by myself, ii) been solely the result of my own work, iii) not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. 6 7 Acknowledgements Thanks first and foremost to my supervisor, Randall Stevenson. Thank you for your guidance over the years. ‘Thank you, thank you!’ to my family and friends. I am beyond lucky to have you in my life and I couldn’t have finished this thesis without your support. You know who you are. If you think I’m referring to you: I am. Mutti: Thanks for always being there for me and for your love. You’re amazing. I think Dad would be proud of us! Mattias: Jag är väldigt lycklig som träffade dig. Tack för allt! Jag älskar dig. 8 9 Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………….3 Signed Declaration………………………………………………………..5 Acknowledgements……………………………………………………….7 Contents……………………………………………………………………9 List of Figures……………………………………………………………...11 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………..13 2. Craiglockhart War Hospital: A Progressive Institution……………..19 3. The Hydra: The Magazine of Craiglockhart’s Literary Culture…….47 4. Negotiating the Road to Recovery: Poetry and The Hydra………..79 5. Inspiration and Therapy: Wilfred Owen at Craiglockhart………….107 6. Wilfred Owen after Craiglockhart: From Craiglockhart to France…………………………………...137 7. Sassoon’s Revisitations: The Legacy of Craiglockhart……………167 8. George Henry Bonner: A New Voice of Craiglockhart’s Literary Culture………………199 9. Conclusion……………………………………………………………...225 Appendices Appendix A………………………………………………………...229 Appendix B………………………………………………………...239 Appendix C………………………………………………………...241 Endnotes…………………………………………………………………...253 Works Cited………………………………………………………………..257 10 11 List of Figures Figure 1 The cover of The Hydra’s first print run……………………...52 Figure 2 The cover of The Hydra’s ‘New Series’…………..................52 Figure 3 Berrington’s illustration for the ‘Notes and News’ section of The Hydra’s ‘New Series’..………………................53 Figure 4 Figure 4 A ‘Notes and News’ page from The Hydra’s first issue (28 April 1917)…………………………………………56 Figure 5 ‘An Anglers Dream at Bowhill’ (The Hydra, June 1917)…….73 Figure 6 ‘Shell Shock!’ (The Hydra, December 1917)…………………73 All items are from the First World War Poetry Digital Archive, University of Oxford (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit); © English Faculty Library, University of Oxford. 12 13 1. Introduction Craiglockhart War Hospital enjoys a prominent position in the literary imagination and is celebrated for the fact that it was there, in August 1917, that Wilfred Owen met Siegfried Sassoon. Despite the volume of scholarship that has examined the lives of Owen and Sassoon, it is remarkable that a full-length study of Craiglockhart War Hospital has not yet been conducted. This thesis aims to redress this balance by making Craiglockhart the main subject of this study. Here, the connections between Craiglockhart’s therapeutic ethos and the hospital’s literary culture will be studied in detail for the first time. It will be argued that the expressive emphasis of Craiglockhart’s treatment method did much to encourage the hospital’s literary-minded patients to engage in creative activities while being treated there. Furthermore, it was by engaging in literary activity while at the hospital that patients were encouraged to move away from repressing their traumatic memories and to embrace the articulation of experience as a curative strategy. Craiglockhart War Hospital was operational between 1916 and 1919, and was located in the village of Slateford, which is now part of the City of Edinburgh. The hospital was designated exclusively for the treatment of officers, who were referred to Craiglockhart with symptoms of neurasthenia after becoming mental casualties of the war while on active service. The hospital is now remembered for its literary connections. As mentioned above, it was at Craiglockhart that the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met for the first time, which is a meeting that has taken on great significance, given the fact that they are now counted among the finest poets of the First World War. Wilfred Owen famously arrived at the hospital suffering from neurasthenia and harbouring dreams of becoming a poet and found his life transformed by his contact with Sassoon, who helped him to realise his poetic aspirations. Siegfried Sassoon’s time at the hospital was 14 not one of recuperation but rather one of incarceration, as he was sent there in July 1917 after protesting against the continuation of the war. In addition to being of interest in literary terms, Craiglockhart’s wartime history has made it the subject of further scholarly attention thanks to its significance to medical history. Not only did one of the First World War’s most famous doctors, W.H.R. Rivers, work at the hospital between October 1916 and November 1917, the hospital itself was a progressive institution as a result of the fact that it embraced the use of psychology for the treatment of the war’s mental casualties at a time when the discipline remained in its infancy. It is remarkable that Craiglockhart War Hospital has not yet been the subject of a full-length study, given its rich historical significance. However, the hospital’s wartime history has been celebrated in creative works that have brought Craiglockhart to the attention of a wider audience. The first creative work inspired by the hospital was Stephen MacDonald’s play, Not About Heroes, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1982. The two- man play took as its focus the friendship that blossomed between Owen and Sassoon during their time at Craiglockhart, told by way of flashbacks narrated by the older Sassoon in the post-war years. It was following the publication of Pat Barker’s novel Regeneration, in 1991, that Craiglockhart was catapulted into the public imagination. The novel, which was the first volume of the Regeneration Trilogy, was set at Craiglockhart and described life at the hospital in detail. In the novel, Barker took a historiographical approach to her subject matter, weaving together historical and fictional details. In addition to describing historical events, such as the aftermath of Sassoon’s protest, his interactions with his doctor, W. H. R. Rivers, and friendship with Owen, the novel fused fictional elements into the narrative, as evidenced by the character of Billy Prior, a fictional patient who interacts with the historical figures within the novel. Regeneration was a critical and popular success, and the powerful grip that the Regeneration Trilogy exerted on the popular and critical imagination is 15 evidenced by the fact that the final novel in the trilogy, The Ghost Road, went on to win the Man Booker Prize in 1995. Regeneration was later made into a film, directed by Gillies MacKinnon, which was nominated for the Best British Film BAFTA Award in 1997, the year of its release, thus ensuring Craiglockhart’s prominence in the public imagination for many years. For as long as Craiglockhart continues to be appended to studies of Owen, Sassoon and the medical history of the First World War, the hospital will remain an enigmatic entity about which we know relatively little. In literary terms, a key question resonates. What was the nature of the literary culture fostered at Craiglockhart and did it exert a tangible impact on the hospital’s patients? It is by using this line of enquiry as the basis for a literary study of the hospital that this thesis hopes to initiate a greater scholarly conversation focused on Craiglockhart.
Recommended publications
  • An Analysis of Wilfred Owen's War Poetry in the Light of Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory
    An Analysis of Wilfred Owen's War Poetry in the light of Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory Berna Köseoğlu Assist.Prof.Dr.Berna Köseoğlu Kocaeli University, Department of English Language and Literature, Kocaeli, Turkey Abstract: World War I influenced not only the lives of “the death of Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) at the many people and changed their perspectives towards hands of German machine-gunners in the final week life but also the literary works of the writers and of the Great War has been lamented as one of the altered the tradition in literature. The Poet of World greatest losses in the history of English poetry” [2]. War I, Wilfred Owen, after participating in the army Particularly, the descriptions of the soldiers who lose during the First World War, witnessed the destructive results of the war and produced his poetry regarding their lives during the battles turns out to be his own the terrible outcomes of war when he was a soldier. The tragic end; his own death, in this regard, underlines reflection of war in his poetry proves that he was the reliability and reality of the painful condition of psychologically affected by the war and until his death the soldiers during World War I. in the war, in his poetry, he portrayed how soldiers turned out to be hopeless, helpless, exhausted and In addition, Owen, in his poetry, did not hesitate repressed by the war and why they lost the meaning to criticize implicitly the members of the and joy of life after observing the sufferings of the other government who encouraged the soldiers to join in soldiers and after undergoing a psychological trauma.
    [Show full text]
  • The War Poems of Wilfred Owen Pdf
    The war poems of wilfred owen pdf Continue The complete and final edition of the poems of the greatest poet of the First World War Wilfred Owen 2018 marks one hundred years since the end of the First World War. This volume, edited by Oxford professor John Stolworthy, brings together poems for which Owen is best known, and which represent his most important contribution to poetry in the twentieth century. The greatest of all the poets of war .... it is Owen's strong respect for the soldier that makes his poetry so powerful. Those who have not returned have their carefully preserved stone memorials in the fields of Flanders. But their memorial in our minds is largely built by Wilfred Owen Jeremy Paxman, Spectator English Poet and Soldier (1893-1918) For the politician, see Wilfrid Owen. Wilfred Owen plates from his 1920 poems by Wilfred Owen, depicting his Born Edward Salter Owen18 March 1893Oswestry, Shropshire, EnglandD4 November 1918 (1918-11-04) (aged 25)Sambre- Oise Canal, France The cause of deathKilled in actionThe britishperodEperodE2 world war poetryWebsitewww.wilfredowen.org.uk Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, MC (18 March 1893 - 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His military poetry about the horrors of the trenches and the gas war was heavily influenced by his mentor Siegfried Sassoon and contrasted with the public perception of war at the time and with a confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his most famous works - most of which were published posthumously - are Dulce et Decorum est, Insensitivity, Anthem of Doomed Youth, Unpromising, Spring Offensive and Strange Encounter.
    [Show full text]
  • Prisoners of Words/Missing in Canon: Liberating the Neglected British War Poets of the Great War
    East Tennessee State University Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University Electronic Theses and Dissertations Student Works 5-2009 POW/MIC: Prisoners of Words/Missing in Canon: Liberating the Neglected British War Poets of The Great War. Larry T. French East Tennessee State University Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.etsu.edu/etd Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation French, Larry T., "POW/MIC: Prisoners of Words/Missing in Canon: Liberating the Neglected British War Poets of The Great War." (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1857. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1857 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Works at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. POW/MIC—Prisoners of Words/Missing in Canon: Liberating the Neglected British War Poets of The Great War _________________________ A thesis presented to the faculty of the Department of English East Tennessee State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in English ________________________ by Larry T. French May 2009 ________________________ Dr. Isabel B. Stanley, Chair Dr. Ronald K. Giles, Committee Member Dr. Shawna T. Lichtenwalner, Committee Member Keywords: The Great War, Canon, War Poets, Prophecy, Truth, Poet’s Corner, Non-combatant ABSTRACT POW/MIC—Prisoners of Words/Missing in Canon: Liberating the Neglected British War Poets of The Great War by Larry T.
    [Show full text]
  • Mycroft Notes – 6 Wilfred Owen – Dulce Et Decorum
    Mycroft Lectures. Adapted Transcript for: Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est. (Mycroft lectures always provide sentence-by-sentence parsing, paraphrasing and explanation of each poem. However, each lecture also presents extra information to enhance appreciation and understanding of the poem under discussion. As the Mycroft lectures are not read from a script, a transcript of a lecture contains the imperfections of a spoken presentation. To avoid the embarrassment of having the spoken performance thought to be an essay and being quoted as such, I have made occasional changes to the spoken lectures for the purposes of clarification. What follows is the transcript of a lecture, not an essay.) Chronology of the Lecture. 1. The lecture starts by giving the background for the poem as an anti-First World War propaganda piece. 2. Initial comparisons with Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier. (Links between the two poems are made throughout the lecture.) 3. The poem is read through. 4. During the reading of the poem, a diagram of how the First World War trench warfare was fought will be shown, illustrating the movement of Owen and his troop. 5. The poem is parsed, paraphrased, explained line by line in simpler English. Various complications noted, or areas of interest raised and questioned, are: ñ The initial similes setting the tone (how Owen compares the soldiers to beggars, old women and animals). ñ The use of the adjectives 'tired' and 'clumsy'. ñ The gas attack. 1 ñ How the addressee in the poem becomes important in the third stanza. ñ How Munch’s painting The Scream may help us to see some of these lines.
    [Show full text]
  • The Parable of the Old Man and the Young (Wilfred Owen) So Abram
    The Parable Of The Old Man And The Young (Wilfred Owen) So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, And took the fire with him, and a knife. And as they sojourned both of them together, Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father, Behold the preparations, fire and iron, But where the lamb for this burnt-offering? Then Abram bound the youth with belt and straps, And builded parapets and trenches there, And stretched forth the knife to slay his son. When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven, Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, Neither do anything to him, thy son. Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns, A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead. But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one. Futility (Wilfred Owen) Move him into the sun – Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields half-sown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds – Woke once the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? - O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth’s sleep at all? Dulce Et Decorum Est (Wilfred Owen) Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
    [Show full text]
  • Wilfred Owen
    THE GREAT THE WAR POETRY OF POETS Wilfred Owen Read by Anton Lesser POETRY 1 Preface 1:09 2 From My Diary, July 1914 1:20 3 1914 1:13 4 The Send-off 1:17 5 The Letter 1:27 6 Arms and the Boy 0:49 7 Parable of the Old Men and the Young 1:13 8 Spring Offensive 3:02 9 The Chances 0:55 10 Futility 0:54 11 S. I. W. Self Inflicted Wound 3:23 12 Has Your Soul Sipped? 1:33 13 As Bronze May Be Much Beautified 0:49 14 It Was a Navy Boy 2:37 15 Inspection 0:55 16 Anthem for Doomed Youth 1:03 17 The Unreturning 1:06 18 Le Christianisme 0:31 19 Soldier’s Dream 0:45 20 At a Calvary Near the Ancre 0:54 21 Greater Love 1:37 22 The Last Laugh 1:09 23 Hospital Barge 1:13 24 Training 0:38 25 Schoolmistress 0:42 2 26 An Imperial Elegy 0:33 27 The Calls 1:57 28 On Seeing a Piece of Our Artillery Brought into Action 1:08 29 Exposure 3:18 30 Asleep 1:45 31 The Dead-Beat 1:30 32 Mental Cases 2:14 33 Conscious 1:24 34 The Show 2:15 35 Smile, Smile, Smile 1:42 36 Disabled 3:16 37 A Terre (Being the philosophy of many soldiers) 4:13 38 Beauty (Notes for an Unfinished poem) 1:56 39 Miners 1:38 40 Cramped in That Funnelled Hole 0:41 41 The Sentry 2:16 42 Dulce et Decorum est 1:52 43 Apologia pro Poemate Meo 2:19 44 Insensibility 2:45 45 The End 1:15 46 The Next War 1:10 47 Sonnet to My Friend – With an Identity Disc 1:05 48 Strange Meeting 3:28 49 On My Songs 0:58 Total time: 79:17 3 The Great Poets The WAR Poetry OF Wilfred Owen It would surely be impossible to name a witness and report faithfully on the horror poet more closely or completely identified of omnipresent death, and commitment with any historical event than Wilfred to protest against it with all the anger he Owen is with the First World War.
    [Show full text]
  • The Poet's Corpus WILFRED OWEN WAS AN
    CHARLES HUNTER JOPLIN The Poet’s Corpus Meter, Memory, and Monumentality in Wilfred Owen’s “The Show” The treatment worked: to use one of his favorite metaphors, [Owen] looked into the eyes of the Gorgon and was not turned to stone. In due course the nightmares that might have destroyed him were objectified into poetry. —Dominic Hibberd, Wilfred Owen: A New Biography WILFRED OWEN WAS AN ENGLISH POET who wrote his best work during the autumn of 1917 while recovering from shell shock in Craiglockhart War Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers. Although a few of his poems were published during his short lifetime, Owen died on November 8, 1918 in the Sambre-Oise Canal, before he could publish his book of war poetry. Owen’s body of work was collected by his mother and seven of those poems were edited by Edith Sitwell and published in a special edition of the avant-garde art magazine Wheels: 1919, which was dedicated to the memory of “Wilfred Owen, M.C.” (Stallworthy 81; v.). Following the Wheels edition, Owen’s war poetry spread slowly throughout the Western world. His work appeared in two separate collections in 1920 and 1931, saw widespread circulation during World War II, formed the basis for Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem in 1962, circulated in two more collections in 1963 and 1983, and rose to become a staple of twentieth century poetry anthologies (Stallworthy 81). Although there are other “trench poets” who achieved notoriety after the war’s end, the gradual canonization of Owen’s corpus has entrenched his life and works as a literary monument to our prevailing myths, feelings, and narratives of the First World War.1 Owen’s monumental status in English literature is appropriate because, during his time as a war poet, he carried a monumental mission.
    [Show full text]
  • Regeneration Study Guide
    REGENERATION TEACHERS' NOTES SYNOPSIS The film 'Regeneration' is about a real life encounter that occurred at Craiglockhart War Hospital in 1917 between Dr William HR Rivers (Jonathan Pryce, an army psychologist, and the poet Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby). The story is also about the young poet Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce) whose support from Sassoon enabled him to write poetry encapsulating the horrors of the First World War. Rivers is tormented by doubt about the morality of what is being done in the name of medicine. The film contains vivid imagery of war and death and contrasts the devastation of war with the tenderness of another patient, Billy Prior's, love affair with Sarah a factory girl. The story questions whether those who have been broken by war - or those like Sassoon whose moral courage have removed them from the battle front - can or should achieve regeneration Director Gillies MacKinnon Certificate 15 Running time 113 mins INTRODUCTION “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse ...A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice - is often the means of their regeneration” John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) Philosopher and Economist (Taken from ‘Dissertations and Discussions-The Contest in America’ (1859) which John Stuart Mill wrote in opposition to the proposal that England should side with the slave-owning Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861-1865) As we rapidly approach the end of the twentieth century two events which have taken place over the last hundred years still cast their shadow over the ways in which we think today - the First World War (1914-1918) and the Holocaust.
    [Show full text]
  • Ergotherapy and the Doctor Who Cured Wilfred Owen
    ‘Re-education’, ergotherapy and the doctor who cured Wilfred Owen The end of 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of Wilfred Owen’s war poems being published posthumously.1 A quarter of Owen’s poems and fragments were written or updated in late 1917 when he was a ‘shell-shock’ patient in Edinburgh’s Craiglockhart War Hospital. Here he penned his most remembered verse. Without Craiglockhart and the care of Edinburgh doctor, Dr Arthur John Brock, we may never have read Owen’s words on ‘the pity of war’.2 A century on, Brock’s ‘ergotherapy’ treatments may have resonance and applicability as we care for mental health issues emanating from current global crises. In 1917 Owen saw action in the Somme area of the Western Front. He became a casualty having fallen into a shell hole. Recovering from concussion he was later blown up by a trench mortar and reportedly spent days unconscious. On regaining consciousness, Owen found himself surrounded by the remains of a fellow officer. Owen was transferred to one of the two reception centres for ‘shell-shock’, the Royal Victoria Hospital (the Welsh Hospital, Netley), where he was diagnosed as suffering from ‘war neuroses’ by doctors there. He was then moved to one of Britain’s six ‘shell-shock’ hospitals for officers - Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. There he was placed under the care of Dr Brock. Brock believed in purging what caused the shock before a programme of ‘re-education’3 whereby patients were returned to normal living and working. This involved ‘ergotherapy’ activities. ‘Ergotherapy’ is the use of physical exertion as a treatment4 or as Brock described it more widely, “cure by functioning.”5 His prescribed activities were both physical and active artistic engagement, stimulating the body and mind.
    [Show full text]
  • Edinburgh Research Explorer
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Edinburgh Research Explorer Edinburgh Research Explorer The potential for civility Citation for published version: Kelly, T 2017, 'The potential for civility: Labour and love among British pacifists in the Second World War', Anthropological Theory, pp. 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499617744475 Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1177/1463499617744475 Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Peer reviewed version Published In: Anthropological Theory General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 11. May. 2020 The Potential for Civility: Labour and Love Among British Pacifists in the Second World War Part of special issue on “Civility”, forthcoming Anthropological Theory Tobias Kelly University of Edinburgh [email protected] October 2017 Abstract Is civility an end in itself, or simply a means to other ends? The relationship between means and ends marks theoretical debates about the meanings and implications of civility. This article addresses how these tensions played out in the context of the particular forms of civility promoted by pacifists in Second World War Britain.
    [Show full text]
  • Masculinity and Shell Shock in the Poetry of Siegfried Sassoon: Soldier of Trauma and Poet of Abjection
    Middlesex University Research Repository An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk McCormack, Peter (2019) Masculinity and shell shock in the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon: soldier of trauma and poet of abjection. Masters thesis, Middlesex University. [Thesis] Final accepted version (with author’s formatting) This version is available at: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/26781/ Copyright: Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University’s research available electronically. Copyright and moral rights to this work are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners unless otherwise stated. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. Works, including theses and research projects, may not be reproduced in any format or medium, or extensive quotations taken from them, or their content changed in any way, without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). They may not be sold or exploited commercially in any format or medium without the prior written permission of the copyright holder(s). Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author’s name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pag- ination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Middlesex University via the following email address: [email protected] The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated.
    [Show full text]
  • Psychological Trauma: a Historical Perspective
    HISTORY, EPIDEMIOLOGY, TREATMENT novel diagnosis reflected a general cultural shift from the group Psychological trauma: towards the subject. Psychological casualties in both World Wars were, in part, considered a failure of group cohesiveness and a historical perspective morale. The vulnerable, it was argued, could be protected by training, comradeship and unity of purpose. Breakdown ulti- Edgar Jones mately reflected on organization and leadership. The acceptance Simon Wessely of PTSD by the American Psychiatric Association was in part a response to the anti-Vietnam War movement, which portrayed the veteran as a victim of an ‘insane’ and unpopular war, but was also a product of a society that regarded the needs of the individual as paramount, in which rights triumphed over duties. Paradigm change During the 1970s a paradigm shift occurred in the way that The First World War and psychological trauma psychological trauma was conceived and managed. Until then, it was argued that individuals without a family history of mental ill- During the First World War the conscription of a mass civilian ness or other evidence of predisposition, if exposed to a traumatic army, which in turn was subjected to the emotional pressures of event, might develop acute psychological distress, but would trench warfare, led to an epidemic of post-trauma illness, termed then go on to recover naturally with no long-term effects, rather ‘shell shock’. At first an organic explanation was proposed: a like a self-healing wound. The discovery of a so-called ‘delayed microscopic cerebral haemorrhage caused by either the concus- stress syndrome’ during the Vietnam War seemed to show that sive or the toxic effects of an exploding shell.
    [Show full text]