The war that drives you mad
Houdecek, François
The war that drives you mad - 2023.
61
War trauma has become in recent years a phenomenon of increasing scholarly importance. The psyche of each actor, whether victim or witness, was deeply affected by the violence inflicted or received. Even though we are far from being able to get an overview of how the medics and the military authorities of the time took account of these psychological manifestations, war of the time is generally thought to be “measured” and not extreme, the Napoleonic period can nevertheless be seen as innovative both in the way war was waged and in the way psychological illness/trauma was dealt with. The period witnessed the first mass war, mobilising 2.2 million people, and brought together individuals of varying degrees of resilience. Military doctors and civilian insane asylum doctors were confronted with men whose immersion in the military world, in other words, the multiform chaos of campaigns, titanic battles, and guerrilla warfare, had destabilised them to the point of breaking them mentally. Physicians such as Pinel and Esquirol were pioneers in the understanding such pathologies, which could emerge immediately after the event or which would lie dormant for many years before suddenly appearing. François Houdecek’s article looks at the genesis of the treatment of war trauma and the first widespread manifestations of a phenomenon that was totally unknown before the Empire.
The war that drives you mad - 2023.
61
War trauma has become in recent years a phenomenon of increasing scholarly importance. The psyche of each actor, whether victim or witness, was deeply affected by the violence inflicted or received. Even though we are far from being able to get an overview of how the medics and the military authorities of the time took account of these psychological manifestations, war of the time is generally thought to be “measured” and not extreme, the Napoleonic period can nevertheless be seen as innovative both in the way war was waged and in the way psychological illness/trauma was dealt with. The period witnessed the first mass war, mobilising 2.2 million people, and brought together individuals of varying degrees of resilience. Military doctors and civilian insane asylum doctors were confronted with men whose immersion in the military world, in other words, the multiform chaos of campaigns, titanic battles, and guerrilla warfare, had destabilised them to the point of breaking them mentally. Physicians such as Pinel and Esquirol were pioneers in the understanding such pathologies, which could emerge immediately after the event or which would lie dormant for many years before suddenly appearing. François Houdecek’s article looks at the genesis of the treatment of war trauma and the first widespread manifestations of a phenomenon that was totally unknown before the Empire.
Réseaux sociaux