Introduction

Abstract

The introduction provides an overview of this transnational, interdisciplinary study of traumatic neurosis that moves beyond the history of medical theories, welfare, and symptomology that have dominated previous scholarship on the psychological effects of the First World War. The central argument of this book is that the traumatic effects of the Great War have been substantially underestimated. Trauma was subjective and fragmented along gender, political and experiential lines.To locate more subjective forms of trauma ignored by prevailing medical and political authorities, this volume utilizes diverse sources, including family archives and narratives by children of traumatized men, documents from film and photography, and memoirs by soldiers and civilians, all of which challenge us to re-examine how we approach the complex psychological effects of the Great War.