Found myself going back to Pat Barker’s Ghost Road trilogy while looking into trauma issues.

Found myself going back to Pat Barker’s Ghost Road trilogy while looking into trauma issues. Obviously, shell shock is interesting as the original term for what came to be the notorious Post-traumatic Stress Disorder of Vietnam fame. But it was reflection on how perceptions have changed that really struck me. Barker has lots of irritating little anachronisms (and one of the worst representations of a Scottish accent in modern literature), which are telling. Ben Shephard rightly criticised some of her seminar room pieties about WW1 class attitudes. But the underlying truths come out stronger. When William Rivers is trying to persuade a patient that his paralysis may be psychological in nature, the patient is “reluctant to concede anything that might suggest his illness was not purely physical.” That, certainly, is an accurate reflection of attitudes of the time. It is interesting to note that, these days, when it comes to psychiatric illness, many people are reluctant to concede the opposite: that certain kinds of psychosis may not be purely mental. Or may indeed, be primarily physical. Obviously the field is divided. But while the genetic or Darwinist thinkers may be over-doctrinaire, that is at worst just scientific reductionism. For those who detest that type of approach, there is a kind of horror at the thought that our minds may be primarily driven by physical forces. The truth somewhere along the spectrum of gene-environment interactions. But it is surely just a question of trying to get the balance right. Why the horror at the physical or biological?