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rachelmanija Jan. 17th, 2023 10:49 am)
rachelmanija Jan. 17th, 2023 10:49 am)I will be doing a series of posts on Biggles/Worrals-related research I've done, in case it's of general interest and/or usefulness.
They will be linked at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bigglesevents; if you have also done research to write Biggles or Worrals, or for your own work or just general interest but it's Biggles-relevant, please feel free to cross-post or link posts there. I'm hoping to get a convenient hub of useful and easily findable information there. They don't need to be essays like this! I will have more posts that are just collections of helpful links.
I completely failed to save my sources for this post, sorry; you should be able to find them by searching for key phrases.
Note: I am using the word PTSD for convenience; it's a much more modern word and was not used at the time periods I'm discussing. If you're interested in historical conceptions of PTSD, I have a lot of posts on it if you're willing to plow through my PTSD tag. Also, I'm using "pilots" as shorthand for any flying combatant.
The modern conception of PTSD and its treatment were founded by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers at the WWI hospital for shellshocked soldiers, Craiglockhart in Scotland. He pioneered talk therapy as a PTSD treatment. Dr. Rivers was considered an outlier at the time, including in Britain, where shellshocked soldiers were commonly seen as cowards and could be subjected to "treatments" that were essentially torture, such as electric shocks. Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy is closely based on history and is excellent reading for more on Rivers and Craiglockhart.
Pilots were not treated at Craiglockhart so far as I'm aware. The article linked below has some information on how medical treatment for pilots was organized, and suggests that as airplanes were so new at the time, it was believed by medical personnel that flying itself posed special dangers (apart from the obvious) and so PTSD/combat stress suffered by pilots and other flyers may have been considered differently from that of infantrymen, as a medical condition rather than cowardice. It was not called shellshock, but rather nerves.
The Nervous Flyer: Nerves, Flying and the First World War
Note: I have yet to come across literally any source, nonfiction or semi-autobiographical fiction or heavily researched fiction, in which pilots' nerves are seen by pilots as medical rather than psychological.
The early Biggles books were directly based on Johns' own experience as a fighter pilot and on stories he heard from other WWI pilots. In them, nerves is treated as a normal and common occurrence. It's not seen as a form of cowardice or shirking, nor is it seen as a medical issue. It's consistently portrayed as a normal reaction to the extreme psychological stress of aerial combat and the extremely high casualty rates, which caused grief, the knowledge that you could die at any moment, and the belief you would die eventually.
Biggles suffers off and on from nerves throughout the WWI books. He's repeatedly sent away for leave to recover, though with the understanding that it's not a permanent cure, just a respite that will allow him to return and fight again until the next bout. By the time the war ends, he's drinking heavily and flying so recklessly that everyone around him recognizes it as a form of suicidality, and he's about to be posted home permanently to save his life when events intervene. Through all of this, he's shown (and shows to others in similar states) only understanding and sympathy.
The Worrals books I've read so far, which are set in WWII, don't feature anything we'd call PTSD, but they do show some brief combat stress reactions. Other pilots are sympathetic and explain that Worrals isn't showing any weakness, it's normal for anyone involved in combat, and it has nothing to do with her being a woman.
The general level of understanding and sympathy for pilots with nerves does seem to be higher than that for ground troops in nonfiction I've read about WWI. However, the general level of understanding and sympathy for ground troops with shellshock also seems much higher in the trenches than once they get sent away from them, unsurprisingly. So I think a big factor there is that pilots may have been more likely to be sent off for short breaks and less likely to be sent away for lengthy treatment where they risked falling into the hands of sadistic doctors. The extremely short lifespan of a pilot may have made it likely that they'd be killed before they had time to get sufficiently far gone that a short break wouldn't cut it.
Now let's go to Germany. There's some really interesting things going on there, primarily that Germany was conceptualizing civilian psychological trauma reactions as the same as ones caused by war. With a few exceptions that didn't catch on, this didn't happen in the US or England until much, much later. In pre-war Germany, PTSD was recognized as a phenomenon that could be caused by civilian trauma such as an industrial or train accident.
Pre-war, Hermann Oppenheim, a German Jewish neurologist, coined the term "traumatic neurosis." This was basically the idea that traumatic events caused physical effects; witness a horrific industrial accident, and you might have tremors, headaches, insomnia, etc afterward. He believed that it was essentially neurological (not psychological) in nature, and had a whole theory on it that is too complicated to summarize here but is NOT the current theory on the neurological aspects of PTSD.
If you were injured in an accident and had a medical diagnosis, you were eligible for a pension. Traumatic neurosis, as it was literally a neurological injury equivalent to a spinal injury, would have been a medical diagnosis. So the entire concept was fiercely opposed by the government as it would have triggered pension payoffs. The government was joined in its opposition by heads of industry, the German medical establishment, and anti-Semites.
So they needed a different term and theory to cover all the people who had PTSD from industrial accidents, one which would not be pension-worthy and would discredit and discourage anyone trying to get a pension. They came up with "hysteria virilis" (male hysteria), aka "pension neurosis." This was defined as post-traumatic symptoms caused by being a hysterical, unpatriotic, effeminate wimp greedily gunning for a pension.
Note that they did not have any alternative to this idea - if you had post-traumatic symptoms, the only possible explanation was pension malingering.
When WWI started, soldiers were eligible for medical pensions. So the cheap assholes in the government and medical establishment again trotted out hysteria virilis/pension neurosis as their equivalent of shellshock. They conceptualized male hysteria due to war as similar to industrial accident hysteria, and decided the best cure was...
... more work! Very convenient for the war effort, too. They funneled shellshocked soldiers into other kinds of work, which... was better than electrocuting them, at least.
If you tried to get a pension for your shellshock, you had "pension neurosis" and were by definition greedy, selfish, lazy, and unpatriotic. Also, "Male hysteria" was conceived of as being proof that there was already something wrong with you, and that whatever happened in the war triggered but didn't cause it. It was literally considered proof that you had a pre-existing mental condition, and therefore you didn't warrant a pension. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
So if you were a German soldier and had PTSD, you would want to hide it if you wanted to stay in service, because revealing it would get you sent home in disgrace and very possibly also financial difficulties due to the lack of pension. After the war, it would still not be something you'd want to talk about because you'd be labeled a lazy coward gunning for an undeserved pension.
(Note: I don't want to make it sound like Germany and Britain were uniquely horrible to veterans with PTSD. France was, if anything, even worse.)
And now, back to Biggles. Erich von Stalhein was a spy in WWI, which at the time was not only a very secret profession but often considered a disgraceful one that a gentleman wouldn't engage in. It's a very lonely life where you can't talk to anyone about anything, and if you reveal the truth about yourself, people will dislike and despise you.
So when Biggles had issues with combat stress/PTSD, everyone around him was very supportive, made sure he was getting rest and leave without him even having to ask for it, and treated it as a completely normal reaction to unbearable stress. He clearly internalized that as how you deal with severe emotional stress in general - be supportive and matter-of-fact, don't treat it as anything weird, and reassure the person that it's normal and they'll be OK. This comes up again and again in the series - one example is in The Black Peril, when Ginger is upset over maybe killing someone and not even knowing if he had or not. Biggles is brisk but kind, and in a manner that suggests that he's had this conversation a lot before.
If von Stalhein had any issues with combat/espionage stress, he would have had to hide it, and probably would have internalized the general attitude about it to some degree as an example of how he's deeply flawed and doesn't deserve nice things. Which was literally the official position of his country's government and medical establishment: PTSD is proof that you don't deserve a pension and are also a bad person.
Another thing about von Stalhein vs Biggles is that Biggles' symptoms were very recognizably nerves/PTSD as it was conceptualized at the time: nervous tics, suicidal recklessness, impulsivity, obsession, rage, alcohol abuse, the belief that he will die. (Regarding the last: yes, reasonable to believe that he probably or likely wouldn't survive under the circumstances, but he was 100% sure of it.) So other people could very clearly see what was up with him and were sympathetic.
I'm not saying all of von Stalhein's issues are PTSD because he has a lot going on, but I do want to mention some lesser-known symptoms: depression, hopelessness, self-hatred, lack of trust, relationship difficulties/isolation, putting yourself in situations that you know are bad for you because you think you deserve it/think you don't have better options/are used to it. Even today, if you have that set of issues, people tend not to recognize it as PTSD and just think you're a fucked-up person. Which just perpetuates the problem.
What I'm saying is that this needs some fanfic.
They will be linked at
bigglesevents; if you have also done research to write Biggles or Worrals, or for your own work or just general interest but it's Biggles-relevant, please feel free to cross-post or link posts there. I'm hoping to get a convenient hub of useful and easily findable information there. They don't need to be essays like this! I will have more posts that are just collections of helpful links.I completely failed to save my sources for this post, sorry; you should be able to find them by searching for key phrases.
Note: I am using the word PTSD for convenience; it's a much more modern word and was not used at the time periods I'm discussing. If you're interested in historical conceptions of PTSD, I have a lot of posts on it if you're willing to plow through my PTSD tag. Also, I'm using "pilots" as shorthand for any flying combatant.
The modern conception of PTSD and its treatment were founded by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers at the WWI hospital for shellshocked soldiers, Craiglockhart in Scotland. He pioneered talk therapy as a PTSD treatment. Dr. Rivers was considered an outlier at the time, including in Britain, where shellshocked soldiers were commonly seen as cowards and could be subjected to "treatments" that were essentially torture, such as electric shocks. Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy is closely based on history and is excellent reading for more on Rivers and Craiglockhart.
Pilots were not treated at Craiglockhart so far as I'm aware. The article linked below has some information on how medical treatment for pilots was organized, and suggests that as airplanes were so new at the time, it was believed by medical personnel that flying itself posed special dangers (apart from the obvious) and so PTSD/combat stress suffered by pilots and other flyers may have been considered differently from that of infantrymen, as a medical condition rather than cowardice. It was not called shellshock, but rather nerves.
The Nervous Flyer: Nerves, Flying and the First World War
Note: I have yet to come across literally any source, nonfiction or semi-autobiographical fiction or heavily researched fiction, in which pilots' nerves are seen by pilots as medical rather than psychological.
The early Biggles books were directly based on Johns' own experience as a fighter pilot and on stories he heard from other WWI pilots. In them, nerves is treated as a normal and common occurrence. It's not seen as a form of cowardice or shirking, nor is it seen as a medical issue. It's consistently portrayed as a normal reaction to the extreme psychological stress of aerial combat and the extremely high casualty rates, which caused grief, the knowledge that you could die at any moment, and the belief you would die eventually.
Biggles suffers off and on from nerves throughout the WWI books. He's repeatedly sent away for leave to recover, though with the understanding that it's not a permanent cure, just a respite that will allow him to return and fight again until the next bout. By the time the war ends, he's drinking heavily and flying so recklessly that everyone around him recognizes it as a form of suicidality, and he's about to be posted home permanently to save his life when events intervene. Through all of this, he's shown (and shows to others in similar states) only understanding and sympathy.
The Worrals books I've read so far, which are set in WWII, don't feature anything we'd call PTSD, but they do show some brief combat stress reactions. Other pilots are sympathetic and explain that Worrals isn't showing any weakness, it's normal for anyone involved in combat, and it has nothing to do with her being a woman.
The general level of understanding and sympathy for pilots with nerves does seem to be higher than that for ground troops in nonfiction I've read about WWI. However, the general level of understanding and sympathy for ground troops with shellshock also seems much higher in the trenches than once they get sent away from them, unsurprisingly. So I think a big factor there is that pilots may have been more likely to be sent off for short breaks and less likely to be sent away for lengthy treatment where they risked falling into the hands of sadistic doctors. The extremely short lifespan of a pilot may have made it likely that they'd be killed before they had time to get sufficiently far gone that a short break wouldn't cut it.
Now let's go to Germany. There's some really interesting things going on there, primarily that Germany was conceptualizing civilian psychological trauma reactions as the same as ones caused by war. With a few exceptions that didn't catch on, this didn't happen in the US or England until much, much later. In pre-war Germany, PTSD was recognized as a phenomenon that could be caused by civilian trauma such as an industrial or train accident.
Pre-war, Hermann Oppenheim, a German Jewish neurologist, coined the term "traumatic neurosis." This was basically the idea that traumatic events caused physical effects; witness a horrific industrial accident, and you might have tremors, headaches, insomnia, etc afterward. He believed that it was essentially neurological (not psychological) in nature, and had a whole theory on it that is too complicated to summarize here but is NOT the current theory on the neurological aspects of PTSD.
If you were injured in an accident and had a medical diagnosis, you were eligible for a pension. Traumatic neurosis, as it was literally a neurological injury equivalent to a spinal injury, would have been a medical diagnosis. So the entire concept was fiercely opposed by the government as it would have triggered pension payoffs. The government was joined in its opposition by heads of industry, the German medical establishment, and anti-Semites.
So they needed a different term and theory to cover all the people who had PTSD from industrial accidents, one which would not be pension-worthy and would discredit and discourage anyone trying to get a pension. They came up with "hysteria virilis" (male hysteria), aka "pension neurosis." This was defined as post-traumatic symptoms caused by being a hysterical, unpatriotic, effeminate wimp greedily gunning for a pension.
Note that they did not have any alternative to this idea - if you had post-traumatic symptoms, the only possible explanation was pension malingering.
When WWI started, soldiers were eligible for medical pensions. So the cheap assholes in the government and medical establishment again trotted out hysteria virilis/pension neurosis as their equivalent of shellshock. They conceptualized male hysteria due to war as similar to industrial accident hysteria, and decided the best cure was...
... more work! Very convenient for the war effort, too. They funneled shellshocked soldiers into other kinds of work, which... was better than electrocuting them, at least.
If you tried to get a pension for your shellshock, you had "pension neurosis" and were by definition greedy, selfish, lazy, and unpatriotic. Also, "Male hysteria" was conceived of as being proof that there was already something wrong with you, and that whatever happened in the war triggered but didn't cause it. It was literally considered proof that you had a pre-existing mental condition, and therefore you didn't warrant a pension. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
So if you were a German soldier and had PTSD, you would want to hide it if you wanted to stay in service, because revealing it would get you sent home in disgrace and very possibly also financial difficulties due to the lack of pension. After the war, it would still not be something you'd want to talk about because you'd be labeled a lazy coward gunning for an undeserved pension.
(Note: I don't want to make it sound like Germany and Britain were uniquely horrible to veterans with PTSD. France was, if anything, even worse.)
And now, back to Biggles. Erich von Stalhein was a spy in WWI, which at the time was not only a very secret profession but often considered a disgraceful one that a gentleman wouldn't engage in. It's a very lonely life where you can't talk to anyone about anything, and if you reveal the truth about yourself, people will dislike and despise you.
So when Biggles had issues with combat stress/PTSD, everyone around him was very supportive, made sure he was getting rest and leave without him even having to ask for it, and treated it as a completely normal reaction to unbearable stress. He clearly internalized that as how you deal with severe emotional stress in general - be supportive and matter-of-fact, don't treat it as anything weird, and reassure the person that it's normal and they'll be OK. This comes up again and again in the series - one example is in The Black Peril, when Ginger is upset over maybe killing someone and not even knowing if he had or not. Biggles is brisk but kind, and in a manner that suggests that he's had this conversation a lot before.
If von Stalhein had any issues with combat/espionage stress, he would have had to hide it, and probably would have internalized the general attitude about it to some degree as an example of how he's deeply flawed and doesn't deserve nice things. Which was literally the official position of his country's government and medical establishment: PTSD is proof that you don't deserve a pension and are also a bad person.
Another thing about von Stalhein vs Biggles is that Biggles' symptoms were very recognizably nerves/PTSD as it was conceptualized at the time: nervous tics, suicidal recklessness, impulsivity, obsession, rage, alcohol abuse, the belief that he will die. (Regarding the last: yes, reasonable to believe that he probably or likely wouldn't survive under the circumstances, but he was 100% sure of it.) So other people could very clearly see what was up with him and were sympathetic.
I'm not saying all of von Stalhein's issues are PTSD because he has a lot going on, but I do want to mention some lesser-known symptoms: depression, hopelessness, self-hatred, lack of trust, relationship difficulties/isolation, putting yourself in situations that you know are bad for you because you think you deserve it/think you don't have better options/are used to it. Even today, if you have that set of issues, people tend not to recognize it as PTSD and just think you're a fucked-up person. Which just perpetuates the problem.
What I'm saying is that this needs some fanfic.
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