Word: grinker
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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...spread over the globe, new medical defenses were set up against the rise of neuropsychiatric disabilities. At a meeting in Philadelphia last fortnight of the American Psychiatric Association, Lieut. Colonel Roy Grinker and Major John Spiegel of the Army Air Forces Medical Corps described a technique known as "narcosynthesis." With such drugs as sodium pentothal and scopolamine, the afflicted flyer is reduced to a quasi-dream state in which he can talk freely but coherently about his innermost feelings...
Guilt Reactions. "One of the most amazing revelations," said Colonel Grinker, "has been the universality of guilt reactions." A flyer catches a bad cold and is unable to take off; another man goes in his place, and is lost in action. The first man is very likely to feel guilty . . . and under narcosynthesis may shout, "I should have got it instead...
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...
Tell It. The timeconsuming, thorough, "uncovering" type of psychotherapy is ordinarily given only to men who do not respond to simpler treatment, and to men whose neuroses appear serious at the out set. Colonel Grinker says that this treatment can be used only at base hospitals or psychiatric station hospitals. But many conscientious, front-line psychiatrists use some of the uncovering techniques. For this treatment, a soldier is given food, rest and some drug (e.g., sodium pentothal by vein) to loosen his tongue. Beside him in a darkened room the psychiatrist persuades him to describe the horrors he has endured...
...long treatment, Colonel Grinker is convinced, is the best in the long run. But, says he: "We do not have enough psychiatrists." Fortunately, Army doctors who are not psychiatrists are becoming converted to the method and are demanding training; "they have seen how little value there is in diagnostic labeling, persuasion, suggestion and authoritative forcing...