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Ernst Simmel was a German doctor. During the First World War, he treated soldiers suffering from trauma. Based on his experience of daily practice he wrote a pamphlet entitled War Neuroses and Psychological Trauma, their reciprocal relationship based on psychoanalytic hypnosis studies, published in 1918. He joined the Freudian movement and worked personally with Karl Abraham. In Germany, war followed hot on the heels of revolutionary chaos. Simmel wrote an essay in 1919 entitled Psychoanalysis of the masses. A forgotten aspect of this story is the fact that the reception of Simmel’s text, which responded to the preoccupations of a troubled context, was such that the ministry contemplated creating a chair of psychoanalysis at the University.