The Foundations of Personality [166]
camp life, the long hikes, the daily drills, the food dished out in tins, as a lark, and his hearty fellowship identified him with the army, with its profanity, its rough friendliness, its grumbling but quick obedience and its intense purpose to "show 'em what the American can do." He went overseas and learned that French patriotism, like the American brand, did not prevent profiteering, and that enlistment in a common cause does not allay or abate racial prejudices and antagonisms. This, however, did not prey on his mind, for he took his Americanism as superior without argument and was not especially disappointed because of French customs and morals. He took part in several battles, made night attacks, bayonetted his first man with a horror that however disappeared under the glory of victory. One day as he and a few comrades were in a front line trench, "Jerry" placed a high explosive "plump in the middle of it." When S. recovered consciousness, he found himself half covered with dirt and debris of all kinds, and when he crawled out and brushed himself off, he saw that of all his comrades he alone survived, and that they were mangled and mutilated in a most gruesome way. "Pieces of my friends everywhere," is his terse account. He lay in the trench, not daring to move for hours, the bitterest thoughts assailing him,--anger, hatred and disgust for war, the Germans, his own countrymen; and he even cursed God. When he did this he shuddered at his blasphemy, became remorseful and prayed for forgiveness. A little later he crawled out of the trench and back to where he was picked up by the medical corps and taken to a hospital. He was examined, nothing wrong was found and he was sent back to duty. From that episode dates as typical an anhedonia as I have ever seen. Gradually he became sleepless and woke each day more tired than he went to bed. The food displeased him, and he grumbled over what were formerly trifles. He wearied easily, and nothing seemed to move him to enthusiasm or desire. He gave up friendship after friendship, because the friends annoyed him by their noise and boisterousness. He dreaded the roar of the guns and the shriek of shells with what amounted to physical agony. He brooded alone, and though not melancholy in the positive insane sense, was melancholy in the disappearance of desire, joy, energy, interest and enthusiasm. Fortunately the armistice came at this time. S. was examined and discharged as well because he made no complaints, for he was anxious to get home. This was his one great desire. At home, with a nice bed to sleep in, good food to eat and the pleasant faces of his own people, his "nerves" would yield, he had no doubt. But he was mistaken; this was not the case. He became no better, and though he tried his old "job," he found that he could not find the energy, enthusiasm or concentration necessary for success. He was then referred to the United States Public Health Service, where I saw him, and he became my patient. My first problem was to restore the power of sleeping. This I succeeded in doing by means that were entirely "physical." With that accomplished, the man became hopeful of further results, and this enabled one to bring about a desire for food, again by physical means, medicine, in short. The problem of awaking S.'s interest simmered down to that of finding an outlet for his ambition. The Federal Vocational Board granted him the right to take up a business course in a college. Though he found the study hard at first, he was encouraged to keep on and told to expect little of himself at first. This is an important point, for if a man holds himself to a high standard under conditions such as those of S., then failure brings a discouragement that upsets the treatment. At any rate this method of readjustment, with its reliance on medicines to bring sleep and appetite and on training to bring hope and relief from introspection, worked splendidly. The fact is that no abstruse complicated psychological analysis was necessary here or in most cases. A man is "jarred" from light-hearted health