Word: grinker
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Soldiers' frayed battle-nerves are the subject of much concern among service doctors and the people at home. Last week, before the Brief Psychotherapy Council in Chicago, Lieut. Colonel Roy Richard Grinker gave his candid opinion of the psychiatric methods now used to get war-sick soldiers back into battle...
...Colonel Grinker divides military neuroses into four types: 1) those occurring before exposure to military life can have any effect; 2) those caused by the restrictions of military life; 3 ) those caused by foreign service with its homesickness and poor living conditions; 4) true war neuroses caused by actual combat. Men suffering from the first three types, says the Colonel, were not normal in the first place and have a poor chance of being completely cured. But men with true war neuroses are not "weak and useless characters, and deserve active help...
This treatment works only on a soldier whose ego is still pretty much in command of his cosmos. About 60% of the selected cases on which the Army uses it are improved enough to return to battle. Colonel Grinker admits the necessity of this slapdash technique, but he thinks that speed is the only thing in its favor. He says it is hard to tell whether the returned troops are effective in combat, that the end result in many cases of repressed anxiety will be a mental problem after the war, if not before...