A ‘creative Tension’: The Royal Army Medical Corps and the Interplay of Psychological and Physiological in the Rise of a Psychoanalytic Synthesis, 1915–22

Abstract

Secondary accounts of the impact of the First World War on psychological medicine have traditionally painted a picture of psychoanalysis as the preserve of a small number of pioneering individuals, led by William Rivers and marginalized by a Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) obsessed with discipline. This view ignores the climate of theoretical exchange promoted by the RAMC's concern with returning as many soldiers to the front line as possible. The RAMC approach provided new resources and a positive environment for the rise of a psycho-physical psychoanalytic synthesis, to build on the extensive work in this field in which RAMC officers were engaged from a very early stage in the war. William Rivers, despite recent popular acclaim, stood at the rearguard of this movement, in which the varied and important work of William Brown is often overlooked.