[lit-ideas] Re: Mop Rumpchuck


On Feb 27, 2008, at 2:56 PM, Robert Paul wrote:
I'd thought that shell-shock, PTSD, and combat fatigue were simply different names for the same symptoms; that where one used to speak of shell-shock, and later combat fatigue, one now spoke of PTSD. So, I'd be interested in learning the distinctions among them.
Ha! This is exactly the subject of the talk. So just pop up to Friday Harbor and hear me improvise it--the rules of the conference forbid reading prepared papers. The short version is that shell- shock was an extraordinarily wide diagnosis. Among the patient records I read there was a division between symptoms of officers and those of other ranks. Among the other ranks there was a fellow who was kicked by a horse, people who suffered from mutism, those who exhibited spastic movements of great variety and so on. Combat fatigue in World War two and officers in W.W.1 tended to exhibit smaller symptoms, by which I mean to indicate the difference between acting in the era of silent movies and acting in the era of talkies. Indeed there's a wonderful piece of film in the Welcome Institute that shows you exactly the differences. Privates in the First World War look melodramatic compared to soldiers getting group therapy during and after Vietnam. 

I'm called to dinner.

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon

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