Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience”

2. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience”

3. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Repression:

4. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Repression: Sassoon suffered from shell shock and convalesced at Craiglockhart War Hospital in England.

5. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” shell shock:

6. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” shell shock: PTSD which includes loss of sight, memory, muscle control; insanity; persistent nightmares; etc.

7. “Shell Shock in WWI” –

8. “Shell Shock in WWI” –

9. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/extra/series-1/shell_shocked.shtml

10. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/extra/series-1/shell_shocked.shtml Shell shock victims often couldn't eat or sleep, whilst others continued to suffer physical symptoms.

11. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/extra/series-1/shell_shocked.shtml Shell shock victims often couldn't eat or sleep, whilst others continued to suffer physical symptoms. Many soldiers found themselves re-living their experiences of combat long after the war had ended.

12. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience”

13. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience”

14. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/extra/series-1/shell_shocked.shtml Officers suffered some of the worst symptoms because they were called upon to repress their emotions to set an example for their men.

15. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/extra/series-1/shell_shocked.shtml Officers suffered some of the worst symptoms because they were called upon to repress their emotions to set an example for their men. War neurosis was four times higher among officers than among the regular soldiers.

16. “Shell Shock in WWI” –

17. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/extra/series-1/shell_shocked.shtml The war poet Siegfried Sassoon, himself a victim, describes the psychological pain of shell shock in his poem “Survivors.”

18. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/extra/series-1/shell_shocked.shtml The war poet Siegfried Sassoon, himself a victim, describes the psychological pain of shell shock in his poem “Survivors.” He writes of soldiers with "dreams that drip with murder" and their "stammering, disconnected talk".

19. SiegfriedSassoon 1915

20. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/extra/series-1/shell_shocked.shtml At the time there was little sympathy for shell shock victims.

21. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/extra/series-1/shell_shocked.shtml At the time there was little sympathy for shell shock victims. Shell shock was generally seen as a sign of emotional weakness or cowardice.

22. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/extra/series-1/shell_shocked.shtml Many soldiers suffering from the condition were charged with desertion, cowardice, or insubordination.

23. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/extra/series-1/shell_shocked.shtml Many soldiers suffering from the condition were charged with desertion, cowardice, or insubordination. Some shell shocked soldiers were shot dead by their own side after being charged with cowardice. They were not given posthumous pardons.

24. “Shell Shock in WWI”

25. “Shell Shock in WWI”

26. “Shell Shock in WWI” – Prof. Joanna Bourke:

27. “Shell Shock in WWI” – Prof. Joanna Bourke: Read the following excerpt from an article at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/shellshock_01.shtml

28. “Shell Shock in WWI” – Prof. Joanna Bourke: ...everyone had a 'breaking point': weak or strong, courageous or cowardly - war frightened everyone witless...

29. “Shell Shock in WWI” – Prof. Joanna Bourke: On 7 July 1916, Arthur Hubbard painfully set pen to paper in an attempt to explain to his mother why he was no longer in France. He had been taken from the battlefields and deposited in the East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital suffering from 'shell shock'. In his words, his breakdown was related to witnessing 'a terrible sight that I shall never forget as long as I live'.

30. “Shell Shock in WWI” – Prof. Joanna Bourke: He told his mother: 'We had strict orders not to take prisoners, no matter if wounded my first job was when I had finished cutting some of their wire away, to empty my magazine on 3 Germans that came out of one of their deep dugouts. bleeding badly, and put them out of misery. They cried for mercy, but I had my orders, they had no feeling whatever for us poor chaps... it makes my head jump to think about it.' [Punctuation and syntax as originally written]

31. “Shell Shock in WWI” – Prof. Joanna Bourke: Hubbard had 'gone over the top' at the Battle of the Somme. While he managed to fight as far as the fourth line of trenches, by 3.30pm practically his whole battalion had been wiped out by German artillery. He was buried, dug himself out, and during the subsequent retreat was almost killed by machine gun fire. Within this landscape of horror, he collapsed.

32. “Shell Shock in WWI”

33. “Shell Shock in WWI” – Prof. Joanna Bourke: Arthur Hubbard was one of millions of men who suffered psychological trauma as a result of their war experiences. Symptoms ranged from uncontrollable diarrhoea to unrelenting anxiety. Soldiers who had bayoneted men in the face developed hysterical tics of their own facial muscles. Stomach cramps seized men who knifed their foes in the abdomen. Snipers lost their sight. Terrifying nightmares of being unable to withdraw bayonets from the enemies' bodies persisted long after the slaughter.

34. “Shell Shock in WWI”

35. “Shell Shock in WWI”

36. “Shell Shock in WWI” – Prof. Joanna Bourke: The dreams might occur 'right in the middle of an ordinary conversation' when 'the face of a Boche that I have bayoneted, with its horrible gurgle and grimace, comes sharply into view', an infantry captain complained. An inability to eat or sleep after the slaughter was common. Nightmares did not always occur during the war. World War One soldiers like Rowland Luther did not suffer until after the armistice when (he admitted) he 'cracked up' and found himself unable to eat, deliriously re-living his experiences of combat.

37. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience”

38. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Repression: Sassoon suffered from shell shock and convalesced at Craiglockhart War Hospital in England.

39. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Repression: Craiglockhart War Hospital

40. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Repression: Sassoon suffered from shell shock and convalesced at Craiglockhart War Hospital in England. Dr. Wm. H.R. Rivers treated him with a therapy called repression.

41. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Repression: Dr. William H.R. Riversat Craiglockhart

42. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” repression= in psychoanalysis: the rejection from consciousness of painful or disagreeable ideas, memories, feelings, or impulses

43. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” repression= in psychoanalysis: the rejection from consciousness of painful or disagreeable ideas, memories, feelings, or impulses • Sufferers of shell shock were instructed to find ways to occupy their minds and to repress all thoughts of war and its horrors.

44. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Repression: http://www.greatwar.nl/ Dr. Wm. H.R. Rivers “made his revolutionary ideas on the treatment of shell shock public in a speech on 4th December 1917, speaking for the Section of Psychiatry of the Royal Society of Medicine. The subject was: On the Repression of War Experience. Two months later, in February 1918, his paper was published in the medical journal The Lancet.”

45. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Repression: Siegfried Sassoon titled and dedicated his poem in honor of his mentor.

46. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Siegfried Sassoon – Before…

47. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Siegfried Sassoon – Before…

48. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Siegfried Sassoon – Before… …and After

49. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Siegfried Sassoon – Before… …and After

50. Sassoon – “Repression of War Experience” Siegfried Sassoon – Before… …and After (Note the blank, “thousand-yard stare”)