Soldiers Don't Go Mad
A Story of Brotherhood, Poetry and Mental Illness During the First World War
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
A brilliant and poignant history of the friendship between two great war poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, alongside a narrative investigation of the origins of PTSD and the literary response to World War I
Second Lieutenant Wilfred Owen was twenty-four years old when he was admitted to the newly established Craiglockhart War Hospital for treatment of shell shock. A bourgeoning poet, trying to make sense of the terror he had witnessed, he read a collection of poems from a fellow officer, Siegfried Sassoon, and was impressed by his portrayal of the soldier's plight. One month later, Sassoon himself arrived at Craiglockhart, having refused to return to the front after being wounded during battle.
As their friendship evolved over their months as patients at Craiglockhart, each encouraged the other in their work, in their personal reckonings with the morality of war, as well as in their treatment. Therapy provided Owen, Sassoon, and fellow patients with insights that allowed them express themselves better, and for the 28 months that Craiglockhart was in operation, it notably incubated the era's most significant developments in both psychiatry and poetry.
Drawing on rich source materials, as well as Glass's own deep understanding of trauma and war, Soldiers Don't Go Mad tells for the first time the story of the soldiers and doctors who struggled with the effects of industrial warfare on the human psyche. As he investigates the roots of what we now know as post-traumatic stress disorder, Glass brings historical bearing to how we must consider war's ravaging effects on mental health, and the ways in which creative work helps us come to terms with even the darkest of times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Glass (They Fought Alone) spotlights WWI soldier-poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in this intriguing study of post-traumatic stress disorder and its treatments. Before they met at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland, Owen and Sassoon had served on the front lines in France. Owen began exhibiting signs of "shell shock" after a German artillery shell exploded two yards from his head and he spent the next several days in a hole in the ground near the rotting corpse of another officer. Meanwhile, Sassoon, a decorated soldier and published poet, had refused to return to the front after being hospitalized for gastroenteritis; the military determined he was suffering from a nervous breakdown and sent him to Craiglockhart. Glass details treatments prescribed by doctors Arthur Brock and William Halse Rivers, including "ergotherapy" (vigorous mental and physical activity), "talking therapy," and dream interpretation, and notes that patients were encouraged to confront their "phantoms" through poetry. Success meant returning to the front, however, and Owen was killed in France in 1918. Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, this is an immersive look at the healing power of art and a forceful indictment of the inhumanity of war.