Mind Wars : How the experience of World War II redefined Western Psychology

Rwiti Bhattacharya

Roy "Eric" Cooper left Burma at the end of the war, but Burma never left him, according to his granddaughter, Ceri-Anne Edmunds.

"Every second of every day, Burma was with him, even to his last breath, he would wake up with nightmares every single day."

Cooper was one among the many soldiers in Normandy and Burma who saw and fought the worst of the second world war in 1944. These men had reached their breaking points and could no longer deal with the emotional repercussions of the War. Yet, they were described by doctors as simply “exhausted” and just given sedatives. One of the most common diagnoses was what we now know as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - characterized by physical problems, such as traumatic arthritis and digestive disorders, and psychological symptoms including denial, numbing, intrusive images and thoughts, and nightmares (Buffum et al., 1995). These symptoms weren’t exclusive to this disorder but with the scale of such psychiatric casualties reaching record numbers during the war period, the medical community across Europe and America was forced to take serious note of symptoms such as anxiety, depression, sleep problems, repeated fears, avoidance of social contact etc. and treat them under the purview of ‘mental disorders’.

This shift can be most distinctively seen in the boom in the number of psychology professionals in the decades spanning from 1919 to 1995 - from a mere three hundred to over a quarter million. While the First World War had highlighted the need for more federal support in scientific research and development, World War Two was able to mobilize American scientists to a larger extent. The development of the atomic bomb brought with it a series of psychological ramifications - increased instances of “shell shock”, transgenerational trauma from witnessing the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings, and a greater focus on the technoscientific tools being used by psychologists to deal with wartime problems (Capshew, 1999). 

What was previously seen as a purely academic discipline, now became more popular in general medicine with the rise of American research universities. Its mass appeal had to do with the fact that certain psychological techniques and even drugs (such as Valium) provided scope for self-advancement and trauma erasure. Owing to this sudden demand, psychiatric services and practitioners became more pervasive in society and ended up transforming the cultural understanding of the self and the individual, such that average people, in addition to veterans, began to seek their help to recover from war-related turmoil (Lloyd, 2015). Personnel administration, morale, propaganda, man-machine engineering, and mental health were among the areas in which psychologists came to be deployed (Capshew, 1999).

Clinical psychology also emerged as an entirely separate branch, extending beyond theoretical study to blossom into a profession and industry of its own, dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. In 1939, these efforts were institutionalized by merging of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Association for Applied Psychology under the banner of the APA, to prepare the profession for national service during the War (Lloyd, 2015). Another major milestone was achieved in 1952, with the publishing of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) by the APA. This handbook greatly helped both, professionals and patients in identifying mental disorders in the early stages and thus had an impact on state welfare policies and medical accommodations for psychologically ill people. However, while this was useful in categorizing disorders such as depression or schizophrenia, it did not recognize veterans’ symptoms separately.

As the mental health of soldiers deteriorated even further in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, they turned to ‘street corner psychiatry’ - “veteran self-help communities who often combined their healing with anti-war protests. Along the way, they met clinicians and researchers who began to advocate for the DSM to include some kind of post-combat stress diagnosis. In 1980, “post-traumatic stress disorder” became a formal diagnosis in the DSM’s third edition.” The inclusion of this, and 265 other diagnoses in the DSM was a definitive step towards the development of psychology as a professional science (Blakemore, 2021). 

Research on mental disorders began to be supported by experiments in controlled, laboratory settings, as scientists like William James endorsed the experimental approach to the study of the human mind, an idea brought in by the scientific revolution. By the 1950s, more than forty academic laboratories had been established in America. They began to assume religious and social significance as scientific claims could now be tested and proven to be more rational than superstitions, folk-wisdom, or commonsensical notions about mental disorders. Gradually, many of these laboratory psychologists began to apply their knowledge and findings to the larger population and undertook psychometric testing of people’s intelligence, aptitude, skill etc. to study non-war-related mental issues. 

These efforts were consolidated by professionals such as William Menninger, chief psychiatrist of the armed forces, who adapted some clinical methods used in the military to domestic practices for treatment of milder disorders, thus giving way to the community psychology movement. This was an action-oriented approach to psychology that was established at the seminal Swampscott Conference in 1965. Community Psychology sought to alter the social and cultural understandings of mental disorders and take it beyond simple therapeutic interventions. It provided a common platform for professionals, students, and scientists to discuss new developments, training programs, methods etc., and thus come up with the most effective and inclusive model of psychology.

There have been several major developments in the field since then and the trajectory of psychology has only progressed, giving the discipline the indispensable status that it has today. The change hasn’t been overnight, it has been brought about through battles - both literal and figurative. But there is still a long way to go in changing public perceptions about mental health and it remains to be a constant work in progress, functioning at the intersection of state interventions, public policy, and other biopsychosocial forces.

References :

Hill, J. (2018, October 26). What is Swampscott and Why is it Important? Community Psychology: Social Justice Through Collaborative Research and Action.

https://www.communitypsychology.com/what-is-swampscott-and-why-is-it-important/#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CCommunity%20psychology%E2%80%9D%20in%20the%20U.S.,the%20Yale%20Psycho%2DEducational%20Clinic

Buffum, M. D., & Wolfe, N. S. (1995). Posttraumatic stress disorder and the World War II veteran. Geriatric Nursing, 16(6), 264–270. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0197-4572(95)80006-9

Capshew, J. H. (1999). Psychologists on the March: Science, Practice, and Professional Identity in America, 1929–1969 (Cambridge Studies in the History of Psychology) (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Mulvey, B. S. (2019, June 8). The long echo of WW2 trauma. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48528841

Blakemore, E. (2021, May 3). How PTSD went from ‘shell-shock’ to a recognized medical diagnosis. History. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ptsd-shell-shock-to-recognized-medical-diagnosis

Lloyd, A. S. (2015). Mental Health for the Everyman: World War II's Impact on American Psychology. UW Tacoma Digital Commons.