Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry, and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890–1930 - Softcover

Lerner, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801475368 ISBN 13: 9780801475368

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Paul Lerner traces the intertwined histories of trauma and male hysteria in German society and psychiatry and shows how these concepts were swept up into debates about Germany's national health, economic productivity, and military strength in the years surrounding World War I. From a growing concern with industrial accidents in the 1880s through the shell shock "epidemic" of the war, male hysteria seemed to bespeak the failings of German masculinity. In response, psychiatrists struggled to turn male-hysterical bodies into fit workers and loyal political subjects.

Medical approaches to trauma valorized work and productivity as standards of male health, and psychiatric treatment―whether through hypnosis, electric current, or suggestion―concentrated on turning debilitated soldiers into symptom-free workers. These concerns endured through the Weimar period, as "nervous veterans" competed for disability compensation amid the republic's political crises and economic upheavals.

Hysterical Men shows how wartime psychiatry furthered the process of medical rationalization. Lerner views this not as a precursor to the brutalities of Nazi-era psychiatry, but rather as characteristic of a more general medicalized modernity. The author asserts, however, that psychiatry's continual skepticism toward trauma resonated powerfully with the radical right's celebration of war and violence and its supposedly salutary effects on men and nations.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Lerner is Associate Professor of History at the University of Southern California where he directs the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. He is the author of Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry, and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890-1930, also from Cornell, and coeditor of The Consuming Temple and Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry, and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870-1930.

From the Back Cover

"The subject of Hysterical Men is of considerable relevance to communities of readers interested in the history of psychiatry, war psychiatry, and hysteria. Among the many books published on these subjects, Lerner's is original, lucid, well organized, and superbly documented."--Allan Young, McGill University

"An absorbing account of the human toll of World War One, exhaustively researched, engagingly presented, and infinitely topical. Lerner sees medical history as cultural history, and his case studies are as poignant as they are terrifying. The monstrosity of war becomes palpable in these pages."--Anton Kaes, University of California, Berkeley

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801475368
• ISBN 13: 9780801475368
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 344