War of Nerves

Ben Shephard writes widely on psychiatry and its history. He was a producer on Thames Television's The World at War.

• Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Prologue: The Shock of the Shell 1. Doctors' Minds 2. Shell-Shock in France 3. Trench Work 4. The Somme 5. Psychiatry at the Front, 1917-18 6. Home Fires 7. Europeans 8. Arguments and Enigmas, 1917-18 9. 'Skirting the Edges of Hell' 10. Inquests 11. 'Will Peace Bring Peace?' 12. The Lessons of Shell-Shock 13. Dunkirk, the Blitz and the Blue 14. 'We Can Save those Boys from Horror' 15. Front-line Psychiatry 16. New Ways of War 17. D-Day and After 18. A Tale of Two Hospitals 19. The Helmeted Airman 20. Learning from the Germans? 21. Prisoners of War 22. A Good War? 23. Vietnam Doctors 24. From Post-Vietnam Syndrome to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 25. 'When the Patient Reports Atrocities...' 26. From the Falklands to the Gulf 27. The Culture of Trauma Notes Select Bibliography Index

Has the American counseling industry actually amplified the difficulties of the Vietnam veterans?… By pulling more and more terrified men away from the front during the first world war, did the army only confirm to them the seriousness and irrevocable nature of their hysterical conversion syndromes? These and many others are the questions that are unflinchingly addressed in this disturbing and original book. Ben Shephard, a historian and producer of war documentaries, explores the psychic traumas and dramas created during the two world wars and since… [His book is] provocative, deeply shocking, moving and always compelling… This reviewer, at least, hopes that it is widely read.