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This paper is devoted to a cross-sectional study of three hundred successive cases admitted to a special 'depressed and suicidal' ward. Serota points out
that the soldier-patient, unlike the civilian, seems to hold intact a portion of his contact with reality, so that he preserves the attitudes of a solider, particularly toward authority. While the civilian displays symbolic symptoms in which old conflicts of infantile origin can be surmised, the soldier presents a picture in which the hallucinatory material is related to his military status. The key point in the therapy, therefore, is the transference situation between doctor and patient, which is particularly complex in the army, since the doctor is always an officer and the patient always an enlisted man. Furthermore, since guilt feelings are always significant, any critical or punitive attitude on the part of the officer-doctor is fraught with danger.
There are four case reports in this paper which illustrate the therapeutic benefit of reassurance, kindness and other manipulations of the environment for the majority of depressive psychotic reactions in soldiers.