Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems

Chapter 498: Case 469. (Gaupp, April, 1915.)

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About This Book

The work assembles nearly six hundred clinical case histories drawn from wartime medical literature to document combat-related neuropsychiatric disorders. It presents concise case protocols illustrating varied symptom patterns, diagnostic dilemmas, malingering and simulation, therapeutic interventions, and treatment outcomes, and includes bibliographic references and introductory commentary. Sections juxtapose cases to illuminate contested diagnoses and to inform postwar rehabilitation and mental-hygiene efforts, aiming to provide clinicians and reconstruction workers with detailed clinical material for recognizing, classifying, and managing neuropsychiatric consequences of war.

A German shell-shy.

Case 469. (Gaupp, April, 1915.)

Gaupp’s simulator had not been under shell fire. He said to his captain that he wanted to see his badly wounded brother (he had in fact no brother), and got a furlough on this ground. He then fled as far as possible from the front, into the interior, roved about for some days, falsely asserting that he was under dentist’s treatment.

He was brought to Tübingen on the ground of mental derangement, on a hospital train, and was delivered to the clinic as a case of Shell-shock. This man’s state of excitement soon ended. As Gaupp could not make out his case clinically, he applied to the regiment and received in return court-martial papers. The man confessed that he had made false statements and fled because he was afraid of shells. Reproached with simulation, he preserved a shameful silence.