[lit-ideas] Re: Mop Rumpchuck
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:21:21 -0800
On Feb 27, 2008, at 10:47 PM, John McCreery wrote:
Thanks so much. I am especially interested, however, in the
differences between officer and enlisted symptoms you mentioned.
Can you generalize a bit?
John
There is some truth to the generalizations that Pat Barker made in
"Regeneration"; because she was reducing reality to fiction, and
because she did not spend years doing research, she had to simplify.
Enlisted men tended to suffer from grosser symptoms: mutism, spastic
movements, uncontrolled speech and wild, erratic behavior that would
get noticed and thus be processed by a medical system that was busy
and under strain. The risk of exhibiting too gross a set of symptoms
was that medical officers might think you were faking and pass you
across to the army's disciplinary system. Officers suffered from
tics and stammers and smaller symptoms that suggested "sound" kinds
of people who were trying to hold things together; the symptoms did
not need to be large because officers were always under scrutiny.
Both groups were insomniacs who would keep themselves awake to avoid
awful dreams.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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