On the concept of trauma

doi:10.1136/bmj.b4577

Published 4 November 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4577
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4577

Views & Reviews

Review of the Week

On the concept of trauma

Simon Wessely, director, King’s Centre for Military Health Research, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London

Simon.Wessely@iop.kcl.ac.uk

A new book tells the story of how the traumatic victim becameculturally respectable, finds Simon Wessely

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

I recently gave a talk at our local school. My subject: shellshock in the first world war. I asked the pupils to name themost famous soldier of that war. Some named Wilfred Owen orSiegfried Sassoon (none named or even knew about the "old boys"of their school whose Victoria crosses were honoured on a boardin the hall in which I was speaking). But for them the mostinfluential soldier of that conflict was neither their own forgottenheroes nor the war poets but a person who never existed: CaptainEdmund Blackadder. Their views of the first world war had beenshaped not by historians but Richard Curtis and Ben Elton. Andso when we reached the topic of my talk, the prevailing viewwas that victims of shell shock usually ended up being shotfor cowardice. I tried to argue that it was not so simple, . . . [Full text of this article]