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In this short and precise paper, the authors give a fascinating and impressive summary of their outstanding work in the diagnosis, treatment and understanding of war neuroses observed during and after the invasion of North
Africa and Sicily. They succeed in three outstanding tasks: they show modern psychiatry at work, they report observations which every psychiatrist, no matter where he works, should know, and, with their observations and discussions, they point the way to an understanding of war neuroses.
The paper must be read in the original; only highlights may be mentioned here. Nobody is immune to the development of war neuroses. Therapy includes persuasion, suggestion, re-identification with the all-powerful group, and stimulation of the ego-ideal. The 'covering-up' method is indicated when the stage of actual neurosis is not yet reached. Where anxiety cannot be reduced by cessation of the stimulus, 'uncovering techniques' must be used. In order to have the patient reëxperience the intense emotions of the traumatic battle experience, sodium pentothal is used in so-called 'narcosynthesis'. The different steps of this brief psychotherapy are described in detail; establishment of a positive transference, release of unconscious tension, gratification of needs for dependency, recognition of the temporal and spatial present, release of repressed hostility (this is the hardest task of all), identification with the therapist and development of a final independence from him.