Foreword / Simon Wessely -- 1. A red-letter day for Professor Charcot -- 2. Shell shock on both sides of the trenches -- 3. From the fields of Flanders to the temple of neurology -- 4. What Major Mott made of shell shock -- 5. Neuve Chapelle and Hill 60 -- 6. 20 May 1917: one day on the shell shock ward -- 7. The mental world of terror -- 8. Dream worlds -- 9. The ultimate way out: suicide in the trenches -- 10. Desertion -- 11. Madness on the streets of London and Berlin -- 12. Believe me, he will be cured -- 13. The obsession with the shell -- 14. Shell shock and PTSD: the debates go on
"They called it Shell Shock provides a new perspective on the psychological reactions to the traumatic experiences of combat. In the Great War, soldiers were incapacitated by traumatic disorders at an epidemic scale that surpassed anything known from previous armed conflicts. Drawing upon individual histories from British and German servicemen, this book illustrates the universal suffering of soldiers involved in this conflict and its often devastating consequences for their mental health. Dr Stefanie Linden explains how shell shock challenged the fabric of pre-war society, including its beliefs about gender (superiority of the male character), class (superiority of the officer class) and scientific progress. She argues that the shell shock epidemic had enduring consequences for the understanding of the human mind and the power that it can exert over the body."
