ABSTRACT

This is no exaggeration for the sake of dramatic fiction. Barker’s account is taken directly from a monograph by Lewis R Yealland, the Canadian neurologist who pioneered the use of electricity and other physical treatments for shellshocked soldiers at the National Hospital in London.3 Pat Barker recreates one of the treatment episodes exactly as described by Yealland, with just one alteration: in Barker’s novel, the scene is viewed through the eyes of psychiatrist WHR Rivers. Rivers watches as Yealland applies electric shocks to the young soldier’s mouth, throat and neck until he is forced to speak, so that Yealland can declare triumphantly that he has been cured. Rivers’s treatment approach is diametrically opposed to Yealland’s. He is pioneering new methods of treating shell shock by showing gentle, even fatherly, kindness to the soldiers while they work their own way through the trauma that they have suffered – the nightmares, flashbacks and intrusive thoughts that we now accept as the sine qua non of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).