The Regression of Psychiatry in the Army: William Needles. Psychiatry, IX, 1946, pp. 167–185.

Military psychiarty is regressive in character, according to Needles, and the blame lies largely with the 'authoritarian' psychiatrists who are opaque to the developments of psychiatry in the past few decades, subject to peculiar personality defects, and possessed of a cynicism growing out of peacetime army experience. Because of their dominant position in the army hierarchy, they foisted their brand of psychiatry on all susceptible subjects under jurisdiction. The

'enlightened' psychiatrist, if he wished to practice a humanitarian psychiatry, had to manifest unusual stubbornness and forego opportunities of promotion.

The authoritarian psychiatrists flaunted statistics tending to prove that they returned large proportions of patients to duty. Those were hollow boasts. No follow-up statistics were ever collected, and the experience of individual psychiatrists indicated that many of the men returned to combat and other duty were sick men and could not carry on. The neurotic soldier, regarded as wilfully sick, was subjected to sadistic treatment to force him to give up his symptoms and return to duty. Drugs, supplanting individualized psychotherapy, were used wholesale to yield mass-production results. Those who could not be induced to surrender their symptoms, were stigmatized as 'constitutional psychopathic inferiors'. They were consigned to 'Recovery Centers', where they were subjected to a grim regime of retraining which tended further to crush their self-respect. When the neurotic soldier was finally adjudged nonsalvageable, he was regarded with callous disdain and refused any kind of treatment.

Needles closes with a few remedial suggestions, such as diffusion of a humanitarian psychiatric viewpoint through all levels of the service, civilian commissions to investigate the activities of military psychiatrists, the selection of proper officer material, and a more democratic spirit in the army.