IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE
Meyer, Ernest L.
Is There A Doctor In The House? By ERNEST L MEYER IN Europe the Four Horsemen have done their work well, and in Asia the hooves are still trampling out the red vintage of the grapes of wrath. War...
...For the solution of such world difficulties it would indeed seem an absurd presumption for the scientist to make suggestions, were it not for the conviction that in the deeper study of the psychology of the individual, the analysis of the origins and manipulations of the destructive tendencies, one may expect to find the key to the salvation of mankind...
...In the opinion of Karl A. Menninger, one of this country's outstanding psychiatrists, it is...
...The war came...
...Is such an approach to the problem feasible and possible...
...to the industrialists and heads of international cartels...
...It is true that psychiatrists are healing mental and emotional wounds of war victims just as physicians and surgeons are healing physical hurts...
...They say that scientists, now concerned chiefly with radar and robots and a thousand other instruments for destruction and defense, have in their researches hit upon secrets of inestimable benefit to postwar humanity...
...These prophets are not without their proofs...
...The chief spreaders of the war virus, Hitler and the Nazis, have been annihilated...
...They see bloodshed yielding to brotherhood, universal bankruptcy yielding to an era of plentitude, and all becau.se war itself spurs both the ethical dreams and the inventive genius of mankind...
...War means the annihilation of mankind by technical science...
...They say, for example, that although industry for years has concentrated on the quantity production of war materiel, industry in those same frantic years discovered short-cuts and new processes which in peacetime will bring a flood of consumer goods, cheap and shining and streamlined...
...How, then, can any sane person rejoice that war is useful because it stimulates ethical advance and inventive genius...
...Written, remember, in 1935...
...Addressed to the world, and unheeded...
...The shadow of universal war looms before us as I write...
...We claim no magic formula for enduring peace...
...But the contamination persists...
...to all delegates at peace conferences— "You have fumbled and failed in the past...
...Everyone knows of the growing rumors of the "inevitable" war against Russia...
...This suicidal bent of nations is coldly exploited by elements within each country...
...The brave pronunciamento of the psychiatrists'of The Netherlands pointing out the antithesis of medical science to such destructiveness is so sensible and so obvious that it would seem to answer all arguments, yet we realize how utterly futile and vague such feeble protests are against the unreasoning mass of hatred so easily aroused and released in mob action...
...War losses in terms of money spent, and national debts, and cities pounded to rubble are astronomical...
...Yet despite the tremendous weight of the debit side of disaster, there are optimists who see the thunderclouds as the prelude to tranquil dawn...
...What good will be your streamlined products of tomorrow, your new medicines, your new techniques of science, if all these bright baubles and magic serums are hurled again with the men who fashioned them into the whirlpool of war...
...We ask only that our voices be heard, that our aid be enlisted, and that among you gathered at these memorable parleys plotting a postwar world of sanity and peace one will arise who will cry: " 'Gentlemen...
...What is ironical is that the reclaimed and re-patched soldiers are sent back, whenever possible, into the very W'ar machine that mangled them...
...The psychosis of a Hitler, destroyed for the record at least at prodigious cost, is spreading across the world...
...The secret promoters of militarism are responsible for the boundless misery which a new war is sure to bring...
...It is a careful study of the impulses, often obscure, which drive individuals to self-westruction, culminating periodically in mass suicide known as war...
...And they add that psychologists and psychiatrists, conf ront-id with the challenge of many thousands of soldiers nentally wracked and unbalanced by battle, have chieved records of rehabilitation phenomenal for a department of science relatively new and woefully understaffed...
...Is there a doctor in the house...
...you may fumble and fail again...
...They cite the fact that physicians and surgeons, with a million war casualties at hand, have achieved miracles with new techniques and wonder-drugs that will be inherited by the bright world of tomorrow...
...He writes: "It surely is no longer doubted by any thinking person that there is no such thing as victory in war, that the conqueror like the conquered suffers irreparable loss...
...The statement then analyzes various aspects of the war neurosis, and concludes: "We psychiatrists declare that our science is sufficiently advanced for us to distinguish between- real, pretended, and unconscious motives, even in statesmen...
...You have failed because you have not recognized that war is a psychosis, eradicable only if the dark urge toward self-destruction is uprooted...
...MENNINGER'S reference to The Netherlands declaration refers to a statement issued in 1935 under the auspices of The Netherlands Medical Society which was signed by 339 psychiatrists of 30 countries and later by many others...
...As in all things human, psychological factors play a very important part in the complicated problem of war...
...LET us examine the last statement first, for it throws light on all the others...
...If war is to be prevented the nations and their leaders must understand their own attitude towards war...
...What is said is that the science of psychiatry has never been enlisted in the drive to combat the war psychosis itself and end the waves of mass-madness that perennially hurl the world into an abyss...
...in terms of populations slaughtered, maimed, starved, diseased, and uprooted they can never be reckoned however long the ledger...
...It might be prefaced somewhat as follows: "To the rulers of nations...
...By self-knowledge a world calamity may be prevented...
...In this sense war, contrary to appearances, is virtually self-destruction...
...The desire to disguise national militarism by continual talk about peace will not protect political leaders from the judgment of history...
...War means that all destructive forces are set loose by mankind against itself...
...IT is time for a redeclaration of The Netherlands psychiatrists—right now, while the talk of protocols and peace-treaties is in the wind...
...Back in 1938, almost on the eve of the Second World War, Menninger published a book, Man Against Himself, which was both guidepost and warning...
...The war—in Europe, at least—is ended...
...Everyone'knpws that here in "peace-loving" America the shouts for a huge, permanent standing Army and Navy may yet swell to a triumphant martial hallelujah...
...It says: "It seems to us that there is in the world a mentality which entails grave dangers to mankind, leading as it may, to an evident war-psychosis...
...to the statesmen and diplomats ; to the militarists and makers of machines and ammunition...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 32
