Shell shock

“I would argue instead that if one story arc begins with shell shock in the First World War and leads to PTSD (for now), then there is another which leads to MTBI [mild traumatic brain injury caused by high-velocity explosions in Iraq and Afghanistan]. Both exist alongside and crisscross with several other story arcs, but these can only be plotted if shell shock is allowed to remain as amorphous and ambiguous as its wartime incarnations. . . Another example . . . can be seen if we consider physiological theories of the war neuroses. In the later years of the war, physiological theories were extremely widespread . . . In these theories, shell shock was interpreted as a physiological malfunction caused by prolonged emotion and best treated through measures such as rest, isolation, and medicinal remedies. . . . The physiology of emotion as outlined by influential figures such as the Harvard physiologist Walter B. Cannon was explicitly evolution . . . The evolutionary paradigm shared by British physicians, psychologists, and psychiatrists therefore enabled physiological elements to be incorporated into a range of theories and bridged apparently divergent explanations of shell shock. This reframing against suggest that there was no straightforward transition to a psychological understanding of the war neuroses: psychology, physiology, and biology were all inseparably blended in many theories” (Loughran, 16-19). . . . As historians, it is important that we capture contemporary understandings of shell shock, not least so that we are able to explore the possibilities of all its different histories as fully as possible” (25).