This is Freud's report to the Austrian War Ministry, which was investigating rumors that soldiers with war neuroses had been brutally treated by army doctors. He first clarified the question whether 'war neurosis' has physical or

psychological causes, and pointed out its resemblance to the neuroses of peacetime resulting from unconscious conflict and ambivalence. Electrical stimulation was, in German hospitals, given with such violence that accidental deaths and suicides resulted. Such violent 'treatment' was intended to be even more unbearable than facing up to military duty. Essentially, it was a procedure directed to furthering the war rather than to helping the patient, and was of little or no therapeutic value.