SALVAGING THE WAR'S MENTAL WRECKS
Hesseltine, William B.
Salvaging The War's Mental Wrecks By WILLIAM B. HESSELTINE IT WAS just a hundred years ago that Dorothea Dix, frail and tubercular, having set the State of Massachusetts on its ear, began a...
...They'll all display "symptoms of shellshock" when they ask what happened to the Four Freedoms while they were gone...
...Psychologists are advocating a nation-wide program of psychological counseling—and are discovering that, at best, there are not more than 3,000 competent psychiatrists in the country...
...In the early years of the 19th Century, some Americans, mostly Quakers, opened hospitals for mental cases, and a number of states provided for public care...
...They're all crazy when they demand the GI Bill of Rights...
...Mussolini suffers from dementia-piaecox, Goebbels from an inferiority complex, and Goering has delusions of grandeur...
...The Germans manifest mass hysteria...
...And among the Marines in the South Pacific there is a rumor that Eleanor Roosevelt estimated that it would take at least two years to "civilize" the boys before they could safely be turned loose in society...
...Salvaging The War's Mental Wrecks By WILLIAM B. HESSELTINE IT WAS just a hundred years ago that Dorothea Dix, frail and tubercular, having set the State of Massachusetts on its ear, began a nationwide crusade to improve the care of the insane...
...Already attention has been turned to the problem...
...Occasionally, prior to Dorothea Dix, some gesture of reform brought changes without improvement in the treatment of the insane...
...But in the Middle Ages the public attitude changed...
...Maybe they'll be "nuts" when they come home—fit subjects to be stoned by the medieval villagers of bureaucracy and imperialism...
...And these CO's are practicing, with satisfying success, the principles of non-violence in an area where physical punishment has often veered close to brutality...
...Sometimes over-zealous communities executed their deranged citizens as criminals or witches...
...Although the long line of reform that stretches from Dorothea Dix through Sigmund Freud to the latest issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology has succeeded in creating new institutions, made psychoanalysis into a popular vogue, and given employment to a formidable host of witchdoctors, it has not changed the common concepts toward the mentally diseased...
...It is satisfying," says one CO, "to see men stop cringing at the approach of an attendant, and it is thrilling to have a patient voluntarily speak to you, the first time he has thus spoken in several years...
...What could be easier than to smear the boys with the new, scientific cusswords of psychiatry...
...Within Massachusetts, this "snooping, interfering, woman"—or so her opponents called her—found that insane persons were confined in "cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens...
...One sociologist has warned that "every soldier is in need of rehabilitation, and that every soldier will show in a mild form, at least, symptoms of shellshock...
...These include only the men of military age—women, children, and the over-aged probably increase the total to a substantial portion of the population...
...Work Of National Importance' Already, the CO's in the hospitals have produced some minor revolutions in hospital methods...
...Yet, despite a century of work, there is little evidence that the popular attitude toward the insane has been changed...
...The psychologist, the psychiatrist, and the psychoanalyst have elaborated new theories, devised new techniques for probing the mind of men, and perfected new methods for the care and cure of the mentally ill...
...But if, on the other hand, it's true what they're saying about paranoia, it might not be amiss to point out a little silver in the cloud's lining...
...Since she closed her labors, the modern "science" of psychology and the modern practice of psychiatry have been born, have become fads, and have—if they have done nothing more—flooded the language with a host of new words...
...Hitler is a psychopath, an insane madman, a maniac-depressive, a meglomaniac...
...Late in the 18th Century, Pinel in France, William Tuke in England, and Dr...
...The number is being increased steadily, and by the war's end there'll be many thousands who have had practical experience in handling the worst cases of mental illness...
...Perhaps, in the "new and better" postwar world, the job of salvaging the war's mental wrecks will transcend all others in importance to the nation...
...Always, the village idiot was the victim of ridicule and vituperation, the butt of jokes, and the object of open malice...
...Today, a century after she began her fight, the work of Dorothea Dix has renewed significance...
...Perhaps in the ranks of these men lay the hopes of the nation...
...Therefore, in the words of the propagandists and in the spirit of the medieval village, they must all be killed...
...Already the Army has rejected or discharged more than a million and a half men as neuropsychiatric...
...Already the politicians, the war-mongers, and...
...They will be the largest single group, outside the professional psychiatrists, with valid and useful experience in dealing with mental cases...
...Benjamin Rush in the United States advocated the abandonment of punishment, cruelty, and physical violence in the handling of mental patients...
...Bedlams in England and asylums in the United States served only to confine madmen, not to cure them...
...A Critical Problem The best evidence of this situation is found in the use of psychological terminology in war propaganda...
...Moralists, too, are pondering the social effects of turning loose men who have been trained to practice the brutal abnormalities of war...
...They are applying anew the humane techniques which Dorothea Dix advocated a century ago...
...A former generation was limited to "nuts," "devils," "lunatics...
...Now, there is a infinite variety of scientific terms with which to taunt the village idiot —"psychopath," "dementia praecox," "schizophrenic," "neurotic," "paraniod...
...The gods set aside certain temples for them, where the temple priests and attendants administered a treatment which would conform to the best modern theories...
...Science and reform have, however, succeeded in one respect...
...After all, these are the same lads whom the warmongers smeared as "soft" just a few short years back...
...For the most part, these men are above average in educational background, and they are vastly above the average asylum attendant...
...Common Concepts Remain Yet, when Dorothea Dix set out to arouse the nation, the treatment of the insane everywhere was barbarous...
...Of course, this whole business may be just another phase of propaganda...
...The fram-ers of the Selective Service Act were wiser than they knew when they provided that conscientious objectors should be assigned to "work of national importance...
...But, unfortunately, the war is producing psychological disorders of real moment...
...In fact, they might cite United Nations propaganda to support a plea of temporary insanity...
...Even under "international law," mad men are not responsible for their acts...
...If Hitler and his satellites are really men of diseased minds, they cannot be tried for their crimes...
...They are discovering that the mentally ill respond to sympathetic, cheerful, tactful, and kind treatment...
...They have enlarged the vocabulary of vituperation...
...Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience...
...She quickly found that conditions in the rest of the country were comparable to those in the Old Bay State...
...New York City has six psychiatric clinics, Boston has four, and other places dhe or two each which are attempting to deal with the problem...
...The popular attitude is still that of the medieval village, and the feeble-minded and mentally sick are still the objects of excoriation and inhumane treatment...
...Fifteen hundred conscientious objectors to war on "detached service" from Civilian Public Service camps, are now working as attendants in 34 mental hospitals...
...Maybe this sudden interest in the mental health of GI Joe is merely the preliminary for a high powered smear campaign in the postwar period...
...In the learned journals of the medical men, these terms may describe technical states of mental disorder...
...The ancient world had accorded demented persons a privileged position...
...In the mouths of laymen they are merely a new profanity of hatred...
...Before Dorothea Dix launched her humanitarian crusade, the treatment of the insane was everywhere bad...
...For 10 years, she traveled the United States in a campaign to induce the states and the Federal Government to support mental hospitals...
...A commission in lunacy might sit on their case, but not a "court" for war criminals...
...Moreover, observers are becoming seriously alarmed over the effect of combat on the soldiers...
...But, if the war-born problem of the mentally ill were merely one of vocabulary—if it were just a case of Herr Goebbels and Rex Stout calling each other nasty, albeit scientific, names—decent citizens could ignore the whole mess...
...Although the number of psychiatrists is far below the national need, there is now being trained a goodly body of young men who can serve in caring for the war's mental casualties...
...the Japanese—the myoptic, snaggle-toothed little yellow dastards—are sadists...
...Of course, the propagandists never take into consideration the essential fallacy in this argument...
...In the end she was successful—every state yielded to her pressure, and she had laid sound claim to being, in the words of one of her friends, "the most useful and distinguished woman America has yet produced...
...The GI's have begun to demand that some of the promises made them be enacted into law...
...Persons of diseased brains were possessed of devils, and, accordingly, were fit objects for hatred, abuse, and torture...
...They cannot even commit a crime...
...the war profiteers are getting a bit jittery over what the boys might do when they come home...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 29
