Psycho-analysis and the War Neuroses

In this landmark psychoanalytic symposium, Sigmund Freud, Sándor Ferenczi, Karl Abraham, Ernst Simmel, and Ernest Jones confront the psychic wreckage of war and ask what battlefield symptoms reveal about the human mind. Across case studies and theory, the book treats tremors, paralysis, convulsions, depression, regression, and terror not as simple weakness or bodily shock, but as expressions of trauma, repression, unconscious conflict, and the ego's desperate struggle against danger. Freud's introduction frames war neuroses as a major test of psychoanalysis, linking them to traumatic and ordinary neuroses and insisting that wartime suffering does not disprove the sexual theory of neurosis. Ferenczi broadens the discussion by showing how war exposes the limits of materialist explanations and demands attention to the psyche. Other contributors challenge mechanistic and "brain mythology" accounts, arguing that delayed symptoms, suggestion, hypnosis, dreams, and emotional memory point to conversion processes and hidden wishes. Simmel presents psychoanalysis as a humane, effective treatment that uncovers the meaning of symptoms, while the collection as a whole shows how war neuroses illuminate narcissism, masculinity, disposition, and the fragile boundary between breakdown and recovery. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.