Shell Shock and the Age of Anxiety

Shell Shock and the Age of Anxiety:

The Psychological Effects of World War I through Literature and a Modern Diagnostic Lens

What is known today as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, was not classified officially as a mental disorder by the American Psychological Association until 1980 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III, or DSM-III. However, PTSD was a side effect of combat trauma long before. The first DSM, DSM-I, had a similar disorder listed under “Gross stress reaction,” asserting that “under conditions of great or unusual stress, a normal personality may utilize established patterns of reaction to deal with overwhelming fear [...] If the reaction persists, this term is to be regarded as a temporary diagnosis to be used only until a more definitive diagnosis is established” (DSM-I 40). One of the two conditions under which this could be diagnosed was combat. The DSM-I, though, was not published until 1952. At the time of World War I, there was no such diagnosis. The vague term “shell shock” was expected to explain all of the psychological effects of war, but shell shock was not a diagnosis; it was a nickname. Psychology was still a young science, adhering mostly to the psychoanalytic style that made Sigmund Freud famous.

It is, of course, untrue to say that all World War I veterans could have been diagnosed with PTSD. Certainly many could, but many still showed dulled versions of the symptoms, a sign of a non-pathological stress reaction (i.e. one that would not be diagnosable as a serious disorder). For example, the DSM-V lists (persistent) negative thoughts, moods, or feelings as one of the symptoms of PTSD. To say that Jake Barnes, Hemingway’s protagonist in The Sun Also Rises, is a pessimist would be an understatement. At one point in the novel, reflecting on his relationship with a girl, Jake simply says, “To hell with people” (Hemingway 31). Hemingway was known for the negative tone of all his works, no doubt a result of his own war experience.

The DSM-V also lists avoidance of trauma-related thoughts or feelings or avoidance of trauma related thoughts or feelings as a symptom of PTSD. In a way, the entire novel is an example of this. Hemingway tiptoes around the topic of the war, rarely mentioning it, but the avoidance is still apparent. In one of the few mentions of Jake’s war experience, the narrator nonchalantly refers to “the old grievance,” presumably referencing his injury while fighting on the Italian front. This type of euphemism is used several times throughout the novel, and every war story told sounds detached and unemotional, despite the inherent emotional repercussions of experiencing war. Trauma-related avoidance is also visible in Jake’s relationship with his not-quite-friend, not-quite-lover, Brett. Because he met her immediately after the war, she is linked in his mind to his war experience, so he tries to avoid thinking about her--impossible, as he is in love with her. This avoidance (on Brett’s side, too), is what prevents them from defining their relationship.    

PTSD can also occur with dissociative symptoms, such as depersonalization and derealization. Though these as diagnosable phenomena are not a part of The Sun Also Rises, a milder version of them suffuses the whole book. The nihilistic attitude of many of the characters could be as a sort of derealization; the voluntary dissociation of actions from consequences. The characters’ actions at the beginning of the novel can seem alarming to modern readers. For instance, Robert Cohn’s sudden desire to go on a trip to South America with Jake, without any concern for his job, his relationship, or anything else, clashes with the sensibility of the 21st century (Hemingway 9).

Hemingway was not the only writer to tackle the issues of the Lost Generation. Sigmund Freud, though now doubted for his psychological theories, also wrote philosophically on the issue. In his essay “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” Freud contends that “we cannot help but feel that no event has ever destroyed so much that is precious in the common possessions of humanity, confused so many of the clearest intelligences, or so thoroughly debased what is highest,” referring to the early stages of the war; the essay was written in 1915, before some of the worst battles of the war and before the far-reaching psychological effects (Perry, Peden and Von Laue 330). He holds that the war “cuts all the common bonds between the contending peoples, and threatens to leave a legacy of embitterment that will make any renewal of those bonds impossible for a long time to come” (332). This is an apt description of what the Lost Generation was, though on a sociopolitical level. Like Hemingway and his characters, the members of the Lost Generation struggled to build lasting relationships and to trust, an effect that would stick with them for the rest of their lives.

Erich Maria Remarque was perhaps most accurate in his description of the Lost Generation in his novel All Quiet on the Western Front. In the war hospital, his narrator observes, “I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow [...] all my generation is experiencing these things with me [...] Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall become of us?” (Perry, Peden, and Von Laue 329). This was the legacy of the war.

Works Cited

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 1st ed. Washington, D.C.: American

Psychiatric Association, 1952. Print.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th ed. Washington, D.C.: American

Psychiatric Association, 2013. Print.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner's, 1926. Print.

Perry, Marvin, Joseph Peden, and Theodore Von Laue, eds. Sources of the Western 

Tradition. 5th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Print.