I am a danish history student doing a projekt on how the combat experiences effected the german soldiers mentaly in World War 1. I have read that psychological treatment of german soldiers for some time was forbidden, but I have not been able to determine how long this was and how this rule was enforced?

I hope that you are able to help with this question or recommend me a source were i could find the answer.

Troels List Sorensen

-- Troels List Sorensen (troelslist@get2net.dk), May 20, 2001

Answers

I'm afraid I do not know much about works of this sort with respect to German soldiers, but you might have a look at W.H.R. Rivers' work with traumatized British WWI soldiers. You can find his _Instinct and the unconscious: A contribution to a biological theory of the psycho-neuroses_ (1920) on-line at http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Rivers/.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), May 20, 2001.

Maybe you can find something in: Geuter, U. (1992). The professionalization of psychology in Nazi Germany (R. J. Holmes, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. (German original work published in 1984). Although his focus is not WWI Geuter might have covered this historical backgroun

-- thomas teo (tteo@yorku.ca), May 21, 2001.

Hello Troels, You might want to research the condition known, for German soilders and Nazi operationals, as "Functionaerskrankheit" (functionaries disease). Generally, these were people suffering from nervous break downs, while excecuting others (i.e. in concentration camps). Also, I would imagine that certain "Holocaust rememberance" sources-institutions would hold at least some information concerning wartime psychology. For the former, perhaps see: Fromm, Erich., (1973)., The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness., New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

-- Stefan Majumdar (cyclone@pathcom.com), May 23, 2001.

Hi Troels, I don't know if this will be of help, but if you need to begin with a comparative approach, a British account: "Good Bye to All of That" by Robert Graves. And there was a movie perhaps two years old now: Behind the Lines. Also, there was a Public Broadcasting Television Series on WWI that covered some of the treatments; they showed clips of the use of electrical shock to cure paralysis, interesting. Psychological treatment can be a very broad category under those circumstances. Assuming that the Germans are not significantly different than the British or French or Americans or anyone else in WWI for that matter, their doctors had to be doing something about the psychological problems. From the brief historical film clips I saw, I think there must have been some radical classical conditioning from the bombardments which could not have been ignored. Robert Graves has some vivid descriptions of events which lend themselves to a learning theory interpretation. The German army would have been experiencing them also. It seems you have to find the WWI German army offical definition of psychological problems; that must be in a bulletin to an army hospital; perhaps you'll have to match up known psychological symptoms with the historical German army terms. It would be interesting to know if the WWI German army recorded their suicides, that might be an indicator of how they were handling psychological issues? Best, David

-- david clark (doclark@yorku.ca), May 24, 2001.

I'm doing a similar paper on All Quiet on the Western Front By Erich Remarque. The book indirectly covers the psychological phases of the soilders. The three general phases are optimism, pessimism, and lastly hopelessness. I hope this will help you.

-- lizzy (Reggie11@yahoo.com), April 16, 2002.