Der Krieg und die traumatischen Neurosen

Somatoform Dissociation in Traumatized World War I Combat Soldiers

“…Treatment approaches of the somatoform dissociative disorders in WWI soldiers depended largely on the prevailing understanding of their nature. Initially there were two general ways of understanding shell shock (including somatoform dissociative disorders): one was the view that they were essentially organically determined (e.g, Lépine, 1917;Mott, 1916;Oppenheim, 1915); the other was that they were expressions of cowardice and malingering. The latter view led to harsh approaches to soldiers exhibiting these symptoms, up to the point of executions for desertion.…”

Neurosis: aspects of its conceptual development in the nineteenth century

“…From about 1880, psychic paralysis and psychic shock became vexing problems in connection with traumatic neurosis (see: Fischer-Homberger, 1975;Oppenheim, 1889), and became examples of the apparent necessity of psychologizing neuropsychiatry. Yet the most distinguished neuropsychiatrists, such as Meynert, transcended this difference.…”

Psychological injury in the two World Wars: changing concepts and terms in German psychiatry

“…8 Equally one can postulate that medical historians use the term 'war neurotics question' most often when identifying presumed tendentious medical behaviour in the psychiatrists of that time, that is, showing how they allowed themselves to be used for political and social purposes. 9 Originally, what was understood by 'war neurosis' was a form of 'traumatic neurosis' in the Oppenheim (1915) sense. The neurologist Hermann Oppenheim had introduced this term in 1889.…”