Chapter III. The War Neuroses—Their Nature and Significance1 (1943)

In what follows I propose to record some conclusions which I have reached regarding the nature of the so-called ‘War Neuroses’. These conclusions are based in no small measure upon my experience of psychopathological conditions among military personnel while I was acting in the capacity of Visiting Psychiatrist to a special hospital in the Emergency Medical Service during the war which broke out in 1939; and I am indebted to the Department of Health for Scotland for permission to publish this paper in so far as it is based on this experience. Needless to say, the Department accepts no responsibility for any of the views expressed.

The term ‘war neuroses’ is an omnibus term covering a great variety of clinical conditions; and there is now fairly general agreement among psychiatrists that, so far as symptomatology is concerned, the war neuroses possess no distinctive features differentiating them sharply from the various psychoneurotic and psychotic states which prevail in time of peace. It has been proposed by some psychiatrists, accordingly, that it would be more accurate to speak of ‘the neuroses in wartime’ than to speak of ‘the war neuroses’. On the other hand, there are psychiatrists who maintain that, where cases among military personnel are concerned, a distinction must be drawn between (1) a group of psychopathological states which appear to be precipitated by active warfare, and (2) familiar psycho-pathological states which chance to occur during the course of military