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'Dottyville'--Craiglockhart War Hospital and shell-shock treatment in the First World War

2006; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 99; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1258/jrsm.99.7.342

1758-1095

Tom Webb,

History of Medicine Studies

‘... THAT MECCA OF PSYCHO-NEUROSES...’1 Craiglockhart is perhaps the most famous shell-shock hospital. It was set up to deal with the epidemic of psychological casualties created in the muddy trenches of the First World War; and, in particular, with the huge increase of casualties following the battle of the Somme in 1916. The hospital's fame is unsurprising in that two of the finest poets of a war over-flowing with poetic voices were treated there—Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. It was Sassoon who nicknamed the place ‘Dottyville’ in a letter of 1917.2 The hospital's literary importance has been established by Sassoon's memoirs, a stage play, the fine novels of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy and a film version of the first of these novels.3 Yet its role has not always been accurately portrayed. Much of the emphasis has been on an unrepresentative doctor-patient relationship between Dr William Rivers and Siegfried Sassoon about which Sassoon wrote much after the war. The hospital has been conscripted by these misrepresentations into a simplistic view of shell-shock treatments delineated by rank: physical torture and humiliation for the other ranks (who were not treated at Craiglockhart), and a subtle reprogramming taking the form of friendly chats with avuncular doctors over tea and scones for the officer classes (who were). Craiglockhart also has an important place in the development of British neuropsychiatry. The concept of a psychological stressor resulting in physical symptoms was still a relatively novel one in this period; the necessities of coping with an epidemic of psychological casualties in the context of the war allowed some fundamental aspects of Freud's ideas regarding repression and the unconscious to gain greater acceptance and currency in the medical profession. In addition, the previously presented chronology of the hospital appears to be inaccurate when the contemporary sources are examined together. The chronology offered here for the first time solves the glaring inconsistencies of the previous accounts.4 It has been possible to examine the hospital's admission and discharge registers and assess the destination of patients treated there as well as to systematically examine the accounts of the patients and staff to gain a clearer insight into their views and experiences, neither of which has been done before.