ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how, throughout history, writers and historians have recognised that following exposure to extreme stress and trauma, people may develop long-term emotional and psychological responses. However, this view took a long time to become established in psychiatry and as late as the nineteenth century there were few psychiatrists who accepted the notion that fear and horror were sufficient to cause a psychological disorder. The experience of dealing with dead and injured soldiers in the First World War provided the background and impetus to the development of new ideas on the origins of psychological trauma. This increase in knowledge has led to the development of a classification of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is accepted throughout the world.
