Apeil 18, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



367 



opportunity that has come to us, we shall 

 pledge ourselves to be synthetic ratlier than 

 narrow in our point of view, .to emphasize 

 the possible practical connections of botanical 

 problems, and to subnieri^e our personal and 

 institutional temperaments in a spirit of gen- 

 eral cooperation to secure results, botany wiU 

 come to be recognized as a great national asset, 

 and research will enter upon a new era. 



John M. Coulter 



UxrVERSITT OF CHICAGO 



PSYCHIATRY AND THE WAR 

 The influence of the war ujion psychiatry 

 in Great Britain has been profound and shows 

 itself in many different directions. A most 

 important effect has been to draw psychiatry 

 into closer relations with neurology. As an 

 indirect result of the stringency of the lunacy 

 laws there had come into existence in Great 

 Britain a state unknown in other countries, 

 in which a deep gulf existed between those 

 who deal with the insane and those who treat 

 the neuroses, the latter affections usually 

 coming under the care of physicians other- 

 wise occupied with the treatment of organic 

 nervous disease. This gulf has been largely 

 bridged as a result of the war. Both groups 

 of practitioners have been called upon to deal 

 with the enormous mass of psycho-neurosis 

 which the war has produced, with the result 

 that the outlook of each has been greatly 

 widened. 



One, and perhaps the most important out- 

 come of this combined activity has been the 

 general recognition of the essential part taken 

 in the production and maintenance of the 

 psycho-neuroses by purely mental factors. In 

 the early stages of the war especial stress was 

 laid on the physical effects of shell explosion, 

 an attitude which found expression in the 

 term shell-shock. As the war has progressed 

 the phj'sical conception of war-neurosis has 

 been gradually replaced by one according to 

 which the vast majority of cases depend on 

 a process of causation in which the factors 

 are essentially mental. The shell explosion 

 or other catastrophe of war, which forms in 



so many cases the immediate antecedent of the 

 illness, is only the spark which releases deep- 

 seated psychical forces due to the strains of 

 warfare. It has also become clear how large 

 a part is taken in the causation of neurosis 

 by physical factors which only come into ac- 

 tion after the soldier has been removed from 

 the scene of warfare. 



Not only has war-experience shown the im- 

 portance of purely mental factors in the pro- 

 duction of neurosis, but it has also shown the 

 special potency of certain kinds of mental 

 process, the closely related emotional and in- 

 stinctive aspects. This knowledge is already 

 having, and will have still more, profoimd 

 effects upon the science of psychology. This 

 science has hitherto dealt mainly with the in- 

 tellectual side of mental life and has paid far 

 too little attention to the emotions. Stu- 

 dents of certain aspects of mind, and espe- 

 cially those engaged in the study of social 

 psychology, were coming to see how greatly 

 psychologists had over-estimated the intellec- 

 tual factor. The results of warfare have now 

 compelled psychiatrists to consider from tlie 

 medical point of view the conflicts between 

 the instinctive tendencies of the individual 

 and the forces of social tradition which work- 

 ers in other fields have come to recognize as so 

 potent for good and evil in the lives of man- 

 kind. 



Closely related to this movement is another 

 which has led those dealing with the psycho- 

 neuroses to recognize far more widely than 

 hitherto the importance of mental experience 

 which is not directly accessible to conscious- 

 ness. Warfare has provided us with niunber- 

 less examples of the processes of dissociation 

 and suppression by means of which certain 

 bodies of experience become shut off from the 

 general mass making up the normal person- 

 ality, but yet continue to exist in an active 

 state, producing effects of the most striking 

 kind, both mental and physical. 



An interesting by-product of this increased 

 attention to the instinctive, emotional and un- 

 conscious aspects of mind has been a great 

 alteration in the attitude of psychiatrists to- 



