The Traumatic Neuroses of War Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE MONOGRAPH II-III III. ANALYSIS OF THE SYMPTOMATOLOGY Our First Problem is to decide what kind of entity the traumatic neurosis is. To this end a comparison with hysteria and compulsion neurosis would be helpful. These latter neuroses deal with certain unsuccessful types of integration, some of which constitute the character of the individual and others which terminate as symptoms. The most noteworthy feature of these character traits and symptoms is their interrelation. Morover, both character traits and hysterical symptoms are related to definite aspects of the personality?those aspects of adaptation which deal with relations to others; attitudes to oneself; problems of status, connected with the question, "What do I think of myself?"; and finally, certain drives toward satisfaction of biologically determined needs?sexual?and those determined by social values,?prestige. To anyone acquainted with the clinical manifestation of the hysterias, obsessional neurosis and character disturbances, the contrast of these traumatic neuroses is very striking. We have already pointed out the lack of displacement phenomena, a fact seeming to indicate that the psychic elaborations of the forces creating the symptoms is very poor. And this in turn would lead us to suppose that aspects of adaptation not involved in the hysterias and obsessional neuroses are touched on. If this is the case, we must proceed at once to examine the nature of the traumatic experience. War And The Traumatic Situation One of the facts clearly established by the clinical phenomena is that the symptoms make a series, many features of which can be found in all cases, irrespective of the nature or severity of the traumatic experience. We are, therefore, dealing with specific reaction type...Read More