You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This history of combat psychiatry was published in 2000. I skimmed it then, finding it very interesting, but seemingly dated and less relevant to ourworld today. We then were 10 years out from the first Gulf War, and the psychological repercussions from that war had lessened. Certainly some had suffered psychologically during the “operations other than war,” in Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans; but we thought we were managing those reactions relatively well, and our fighting strength was minimally affected.
Then September 11th happened. Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq followed. Now we are mired in insurgency warfare, and the lessons of World Wars I and II, and the Vietnam War, are increasingly relevant.
A War of Nerves is a fascinating volume. It covers the history of combat psychiatry, with a focus on the British experience of the first two World Wars. The treatment of the Korean War and the first Gulf War is, by contrast, relatively brief. Since the author is a British historian, writing from the perspective of his compatriots, this emphasis (which I found unbalanced and occasionally tedious) is understandable.
Shephard draws on numerous historical documents to provide snapshots of many psychiatrists who served on the front lines and back in the United Kingdom and other countries. There are numerous debates recurring in the volume that remain relevant today: far forward mental health treatment, the use of psychiatric medications, milieu therapy, malingering, and ethical dilemmas posed by the need to send impaired soldiers back to battle. The broad lessons from these wars are well known to American military psychiatry and psychology, so this part does not contain surprises, but Shephard embellishes our knowledge with details from letters and other writings of that period.
As the campaigns surged during these wars, so did the pressure on psychiatrists to keep men on the front lines. Infighting amo