PTSD from Shakespeare's time and before

[rachelmanija]

I'm writing a paper on PTSD and combat-related berserk states as depicted in pre-1650 sources and comparing it to the current understanding of both. Ideally, I will be able to reference substance/alcohol use and abuse in relation to this.

Can you recommend me some sources to check out? I am definitely going to be using Shakespeare's Henry V, Part I. I have already thought of Macbeth (possible PTSD), and The Iliad and The Mahabharata (berserk states). Nonfiction is also fine.

NOTE: No Civil War memoirs! I'm trying to find sources from before PTSD was really conceptualized as such, and it had been conceptualized as "soldier's heart" by then.

Comments

[staranise]

MARGERY KEMPE. It's a nonfic first-person memoir! And tons of research has been done on her, trying to parse her experiences with a modern understanding.

Oh, though she's just PTSD, no transit. Her PTSD is mostly from hella traumatic childbirth. So if it's a both-and, I guess she doesn't count.

[rachelmanija]

Interesting! I know who she is but haven't ever read her book. So you think maybe PTSD? I have heard temporal lobe seizures and migraines with aura.

[staranise]

Why did I write "transit"? I meant "combat". Anyway, she had a really bad childbirth and then went into a psychotic state and was chained in a storeroom for six months until Jesus appeared to her in a vision. I've read arguments (in 2005, online, somewhere) that this qualifies as a trauma narrative.

[rachelmanija]

Wow! I don't know if that will work for this particular paper, but I should read it just because.

[kore]

You should totally read Margery anyway (in your COPIOUS spare time, haha) because IIRC she wrote one of the first autobiographical memoirs, esp one of the first by a woman (take that, Augustine) and she's just kind of totally badass and independent. Scholars used to think she was "mad," apparently, haha.

[thistleingrey]

She is, except for the part where she's dependent upon the person writing down her narrative and couldn't check whether he'd written it accurately. Anyway, yes, Rachel should read it sometime :)

[kore]

MARGERY KEMPE <3333

[vom_marlowe]

There's some kind of battle frenzy mentioned in the Bacchae, but I can't remember it right now. Also, I think the lit about the gay lover band has some stuff about battle psychology in it, but I'm too tired to remember off the top of my head. If either of those sound interesting, I'll look for it tomorrow....

[kore]

Ohh Theban Band? Now I want to look that up....

Do you remember, what is it, Trojan Women? By Euripides? That might have something....

[kore]

Not sure if this is good, but might be worth checking out? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990839/

Anxiety disorders in ancient Indian literature - Hitesh C. Sheth, Zindadil Gandhi, and G. K. Vankar

[kore]

Also, a friend of mine totally loves this book http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6069.Achilles_in_Vietnam

[nestra]

Yep, I had a class in college where we read The Iliad and that. The Odyssey might work too.

[kore]

Yeah, I was trying to think of Roman? sources, but it's hard.

Rache some other books -

Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam
Jonathan Shay, Odysseus in America
Lawrence Tritle, From Melos to My Lai

Also I can't access this but maybe you can http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=8389214&jid=GAR&volumeId=58&issueId=02&aid=8389213&bodyId=&membershipNumber=&societyETOCSession=

Caesar in Vietnam: Did Roman Soldiers Suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

[rachelmanija]

It's excellent, yes.

[17catherines]

I seem to recall Irish legends about Cuchulain going into a beserker state (that literally changed his body), and I think Achilles acted similarly in the Iliad? I'm sorry, it's been a long time since I read them and I don't have time to go a-hunting for the texts just now, but I suspect they would not be hard to find.

[thistleingrey]

Are you thinking of Táin Bó Cúailnge?

[17catherines]

I think I might be. Sorry, it's been about 17 years since I even thought about this...

[thistleingrey]

No worries, and I hear you: eighteen for me. :)

[vass]

I seem to remember hearing that the Epic of Gilgamesh has both of those things. I haven't actually read it yet.

[dorothean]

I think so too! There's probably substance abuse too.

[em_h]

Yes, definitely Gilgamesh.

[jinian]

Wim suggested cities under siege might have some interesting memoirs. I wasn't sure whether you wanted a sustained kind of PTSD or a catastrophic one, but it could be interesting to do both if you can find something like that. I want to see this paper!

[em_h]

I'll try to remember to ask A about medieval Celtic texts. I'm fairly sure there would be relevant stuff in at least some versions of the Arthurian material, too, though I can't off the top of my head think where. I rather favour the Old French Arthurian matter, but Malory could be worth a look also.

[thistleingrey]

Yes--characterized as someone who's uncourtly for having too much of a temper in battle. Possibly Gawain in the so-called Vulgate Cycle, during the queste part where everyone but Galahad is disqualified? It's been nearly twenty years since I read those texts, though. :( If Rachel is interested, there's Penguin Classics translations of Queste del Saint Graal (trans. Matarasso, I think) and its sequel chunk, Mort Artu; these are the French ones, which matters because there are two English poetic deaths of Arthur before Malory, and one of them has a Penguin edition, too.
ETA Wait, possibly Perceval instead of Gawain, because a tickle of memory says that the German Parsifal (based upon Perceval but ultimately quite different) has a temper problem, too. And certainly Perceval has a little problem with killing someone he was meant to rescue in one of the continuations to Chrétien--though I think the continuations haven't been translated into English.

So that I don't keep leaving separate comments: there is a ton of berserker material in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic, whence the word in English in the first place. The Norse texts mentioned in the Wikipedia page are reasonable things to mention. I frown at the "In popular culture" section, especially since there isn't much berserk behavior in Beowulf.

[dorothean]

I'm sure your paper has long been written, but I remembered this post when I was reading the YA novel Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki) today. It is about the experience of the Navajo men who served in the U.S. Marines in WWII and who made their language into a very important code. I really recommend the book in general but thought you would like to read the following passage:

"The name the armed forces gave to that sickness of the mind and spirit was 'battle fatigue.' It was hard for some people to understand, especially those who'd never been in combat. Some even accused those men of being fakers and cowards. But we Navajos understood it well. Our ancestors saw what war does to human beings. When we must fighter other humans, injure and kill them, we also injure a part of ourselves. Our spirits become sick from contact with the enemy.

"Long, long ago, even the Holy People [Navajos] suffered from this. It happened that way after the Sacred Twins were given the Thunder Bow and the Arrows of Lighting by their father, the Sun. Monster Slayer used those arrows to destroy the monsters that had been devouring the people. He killed the giant Ye'iitsoh. He killed the Monster Who Kicked People off the Cliff, the Horned Monster, the Monster Birds, the Eyes That Kill, the Rolling Rock, and many other awful beings. The only terrible beings that even Monster Slayer was unable to kill were those that still attack us all. Those ones are Poverty, Old Age, and Hunger.

"But when Monster Slayer was done with destroying enemies, he became ill himself. Killing those enemies had made him sick. So the first Enemyway ceremony was done to cure him by restoring him to balance.

"After Guadalcanal and Bougainville and Guam I, too, felt tired and sick from war. But there was little opportunity for me to give in to fatigue. As soon as my physical wounds were better I was shipped back to the line. More battles lay ahead before any of us could seek the healing of an Enemyway."

At the end of the novel when the narrator, Ned, comes home, he does suffer from PTSD and eventually is healed by an Enemyway ceremony done by his family's friend Hosteen Mitchell.

Bruchac doesn't say where he learned about the Monster Slayer story, but although it might not be in a pre-1650 written source, I wouldn't be surprised if it goes back then as oral history. Hosteen Mitchell was a real person and his memoir (edited and published posthumously) is in Bruchac's bibliography: Navajo Blessingway Singer, The Autobiography of Frank Mitchell, 1881-1967.

[rachelmanija]

Thank you very much! I own that book, but haven't read it yet. It just got bounced to the top of my to-read stack.

If Monster Slayer is from the oral tradition, yeah, I would assume it goes way back.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

There is a good (as in well done, though the format is awful) translation of Grimmelshausen's SIMPLICIUS SIMPLICISSIMUS, a peasant's eye view of the Thirty Years' War by a guy who was in it. Funny and horrific by turns, it shows an entire culture hit by PTSD, as well as individuals. (Bonus bits, the etiquette of picking lice off your mistress.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I will check Project Gutenberg.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Another good one is Le Morte d'Arthur. You can tell that Malory knew what he was talking about re battle and its effects. (THough there is evidence he was a rotter, hey, you aren't researching the moral worth of your subjects.)_

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Moral worth of subjects is totally irrelevant. Though we did have some class discussion of "Can sociopaths get PTSD?" Apparently, yes.

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

Hmm, Beowulf?

[dunmurderin.livejournal.com]

http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/berserke.shtml -- there's a mention of Beowulf in this article about berzerkers by the Viking Answer Lady.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Cú Chulainn! The Thomas Kinsella translation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge gives you some fascinating descriptions of 'warp spasm'.

[larryhammer]

From Iceland, Egil's Saga and, especially, Eyrbyggja Saga. Plus possibly Skarphedin in Njal's Saga.

ETA: Oh, and the Neibelungenlied, the medieval German epic version of the Volsung Saga -- particularly for Gudrun after Siegfried's slaying.

---L.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Hm. I was going to suggest the Odyssey, but if you've got the Iliad in there already, it'd probably come across as a touch redundant. (Nonetheless, Odysseus does not come across as a man who's sanguine after all that combat, whatever he wants to claim.)

[qian.livejournal.com]

How interesting! I'll ask Cephas if he's got any recs.

[qian.livejournal.com]

C&p-ed from an email -- I should've mentioned that I asked Cephas because that's precisely his period. I'm assuming everything here should be available from an academic library.

The first that springs to mind is Ariosto's Orlando Furioso ('The Frenzy of Orlando') which provides a set of tropes for a berserker's rage; his rampaging madness is caused by infatuation, but might provide an opportunity to explore how martial trauma (it is set during the crusades) and courtly decorum jut up against each other.

Going backwards there's Hercules furens (plays by Seneca and Euripides), and going forward Spenser's Faerie Queene (Guyon's destruction of the Bower of Bliss in Book 2, canto 12 and whatever its sources are feels relevant). Both are linked with Ariosto, I imagine.

If these examples contain too much love and not enough war, then Tasso's Gierusalemme liberata ('Jerusalem Delivered'), is a crusader's epic with many emotionally wounded individuals (again, love intrudes here); otherwise the Iliad and Achilles would be my number one pick.

I mention this range because there will be connections between their portrayals of these mental states. With Shakespeare, Coriolanus' behaviour suggests to me that he has has been pretty seriously disturbed by war experiences.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

My first thought was Hercules!

[erikagillian.livejournal.com]

I would really like to read the paper when you're done, it sounds so fascinating.

[the-red-baron.livejournal.com]

This is pretty well known, I think, so you're probably already aware of it, but Herodotus mentions a case of psychosomatic blindness (er, is that the phrase now or what? I usually see it described in older books as "hysterical blindness") at the Battle of Marathon. I'd be kind of surprised if PTSD doesn't come up elsewhere in Herodotus' depictions of war, too, or in Thucydides.

A while back I read a paper arguing that Clearchus of Sparta showed PTSD symptoms in Xenophon's Anabasis. I didn't find all of it convincing, but it's true Clearchus is described as being more or less addicted to war, shows signs of hypervigilance, paranoia and inability to trust others, and at one point loses his temper and goes into something like a berserk state while not on the battlefield, in response to a trigger that might have reminded him of combat.

Sir William Marshal

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

12th century knight, William Marshal in his later years tended to get carried away. Once inthe middle of a battle, he pursued 3 French knights into a castle and knocked them down. When his friends caught up:

Friends: "Hey William, WTF you doing dude?"

William : "OMG! I thought I was in a tournament."

All: "ROFL"

(My translation from the Anglo Norman French is idiomatic)

However, tread politely. Sir William was the greatest knight ever.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

The Anglo-Saxon poems The Wanderer and The Seafarer, which are religious, yes, but are also a wonderful exploration of alienation from home and kin as a result of war and violence.

[zdenka]

I went to a modern-dress performance of Sophocles's Ajax a couple years ago. The actors came out to talk to the audience afterwards, and they described how they thought Ajax had some PTSD-like behaviors.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Viking berserkers had trouble 'turning it off' when it wasn't wartime. Found some cites for you here, (http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/berserke.shtml) read down to Part II. Part IV suggests that Grendel might have originally been a berserk who went out of control (though I'm not sure what the bit about his mother than means, lol).

[cat-i-th-adage.livejournal.com]

Lancelot du Lac lost his mind and ran through the woods at least once. I think Cuchulain and some other Irish heroes did similar (but I can't find a source to confirm and don't quite trust my memory). Cuchulain definitely had changes in personality - when he wasn't fighting, he was often described as short, dark, and sad-faced or solemn.

I dunno, I'm not sure if they count as PTSD - Lancelot's stressor was relationship issues. Though, there does seem to be a theme of running mad in the woods when emotional upset gets too great. Come to think of it Sir Orfeo (the Middle English version) had Orfeo going to the woods while he grieved for his wife.

For non-combat trauma, there's Dr Manette from Tale of Two Cities - when he comes out of decades imprisonment in the Bastille, he's obsessed with making shoes. He comes out of it, but moments of stress keep sending him back to his shoemaker's bench.