| Phase | I. | “TORPILLAGE” AND INTENSIVE REËDUCATION |
| Phase | II. | FIXATION OF PROGRESS BY EXERCISES |
| Phase | III. | PROLONGED SPECIAL TRAINING |
After Clovis Vincent
Specialists for consultation should be available, including ophthalmologists, otologists, laryngologists and electrical specialists. The tests over, the patient should be examined as it were, in a free state and his habits and character noted. Hypnosis may be tried but it should not be prolonged. Psychic contagion is to be avoided especially in the case of subjects with epileptoid crises.
It would be well to establish for the cases regarded as susceptible to psychotherapy, reëducation centers like those for the re-adaptation of the tuberculous. The improved tuberculous are sent to health centers under the Ministry of the Interior for three months at the maximum and emerge much better able to support the exigencies of life. According to Duprat, there ought to be psychotherapy centers which should not in any sense recall asylums for the insane. Set in the country but not far from the city, managed by the psychological physicians and “médecins psychologues, plus éducateurs que médecins.” The personnel should consist of students going into psychiatry and of teachers whose pedagogical practice ought to enable them to second the efforts of the psychiatrists. In this way we might avoid the perpetuation of some of the psychopathies of war.
109. Possibly “putting forward the best foot” may yield a wrong impression of the proportion of what I have termed “miracle cures.” Other devices of a slower nature are mentioned throughout the book. Perhaps much depends on the temperament of the psychotherapeutist, as e.g., Laignel-Lavastine has remarked about the method of psychotherapy by means of conversation: that one might easily remain in a honeymoon state in military psychotherapy. When hundreds and thousands of functional nervous cases pass through one’s hands it is necessary to remember that behind the conversation there stands the imposing finger of material force.
Compare the work of Clovis Vincent, Yealland, Kaufmann.
110. On the other hand, Rows points out that shock is a term that does not explain at all adequately the great variety of mental illnesses occurring in the soldiers at the front. The term is popularly used for cases which recover quickly, but in the majority of cases there is a residuum after the shock has disappeared. Accordingly Rows’ work has dealt chiefly with underlying causes, conditions, and factors. Here we may consider
(a) The war strain before breakdown;