The Washington herald., 1920-04-11

INSHELLSHOCK.
Men Suffering from Mental
Disorder are Easy 4
Subjects.
WORK OFF EMOTION
Soldiers Re-enact Their Ex-
periences on Battlefield
In War.

DR.. William Brown, late medicai
offcer in the British army and
reader in psychology at London
University. says shell shock patients
can be cured by working of the
emotion repressed at the time when
the shock occurred.
All such cases show loss Of mem
ory Of greater or less extent. They
may have forgotten everything that
has happened since the shell burst,
and they will exhibit other losses OF
function. They may show loss OF
voice, of powers of walking, OF
hearing or of the power OF volun-
tary control.
1t will be found that such a per-
son is very easily hypnotized; IL 1t
be suggested to him that he will re-
member the circumstances OF his
injury he will act again the whole
and In that process
his various functions will return.
What has been done? We have
brought up the lost memories. and
with the memories the lost func-
tions. But we have done more than
that; we have given him an outlet
for an emotion which was originally
experienced by him with so great
an intensity that he could not do
full justice to it and his mind split
in the attempt.
Emotion of Fear.
While under she'll fire the con-
scious personality was trying to
suppress the emotion OF fear, partly
from a sense Of duty-duty OF
soldier party in self-defense -
anything to get away from 1t.
In curing that patient we bring
up the repressed experience once
more. We encourage him to work
of the emotion involved in II.
For example take the case OF q
gunner patient Of mine. He had
been suffering for two years from
a tremor of the arm. dating from
the time he had been blown up at
Ypres. I sent him to sleep. Then
/ suggested he live again at Ypres.
He did so, and began to shout all
sorts of things. which showed what
had happened at the time.
He was apparently serving the
gun and someone else was handing
him ammunition. Then 1 noticed he
was moving the handle with his
right hand; his hand began to shake
violently and soon he was shaking
all over. Then suddenly he became
absolutely still. ! suggested that he
remember all that he had just gone
through with and that woke him
up. He looked at his hand, which
was absolutely still, with amaze
ment.
Shayes Himself Again.
the emotion which this experience
had excited in him had been bottled
up for two years. The next morn
ing he was able to shave himself
with an ordinary razor for the first
time since his illness.
Another interesting cure was that
of a Flying Corps signaler who was
blown UP by a bomb and found on
Iregaining consciousness that every
thing appeared twisted at right an
giles to its ordinary position. The
first attempt at hypnotism effected
only a partial cure. ! was then in
formed that when he was a child Of
six he had shown similar symptoms
after a fall.
After further hypnotic sleeps he
remembered that when he was three
years old he had upset some hot cof-
fee down his right arm and had
felt a pain in his left side. He re-
membered that when he awoke he
felt the bed to be the wrong way
round.
That was the first experience Of
ldis-orientation he could remember.
1t occurred to me that the scalding
of his arm produced a fainting fit
in which he fell to the left and ev-
erything twisted to the right. But
man.