Restoring the Balance

"Restoring the Balance"

World War I was a war of new technology. There were machine guns, gas bombs, and trenches. Because of this new technology, World War I was also a war filled with atrocities. The men fighting in the war experienced horrors that no human being should have ever experienced. The novel Regeneration by Pat Barker addresses the question of how these soldiers were supposed to recover from these horrors. For Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, there was only one answer -- psychology. On page 29, a patient of Rivers' named Anderson tells Rivers, "That's what you Freudian Johnnies are on about all the time, isn't it? Nudity, snakes, corsets." Freudian therapy is also alluded to on pages 31 and 46, although Freudian methods of analyzing dreams, recognizing symbols, and understanding the unconscious are constants. Rivers helps to bring the traumatized soldiers back to a reality where they can accept life and the duties that they must fulfill through the use of a psychology which draws upon Freud's theories. The appearance of Freudian psychology in Regeneration helps to acknowledge the frailty of the human mind, body, and soul. Rivers' use of psychology is a way to restore the delicate balance of life, giving renewal to a life thought hopeless by its possessor.

Sigmund Freud's life work as a psychologist and psychoanalyst has been very influential. Sigmund Freud (1856-1931) attended college in Vienna where he started writing his many treatises and theories on the psychoanalytical approach. In 1881, Freud got his doctor's degree in medicine. From 1885-86, Freud spent time studying the effects of hypnosis and studied hysteria. From 1900 to 1916, Freud wrote many of his most famous works, such as The Interpretation of Dreams, and gave many lectures. Of all his works and theories, Freud is most known for his theories on the unconscious and for the importance he puts on sex (Thornton). With the start of World War I, Freud began studying several patients suffering from hysteria and shell-shock. He died of cancer in England in 1931.

Freud studied and wrote several theories on neurosis and the use of psycho-analysis as a form of therapy. Freud said that there were several forms in which neurosis appears, including repression, regression, and fixation. Freud felt that in order "to effect a cure, he must facilitate the patient himself to become conscious of unresolved conflicts buried in the deep recesses of the unconscious mind, and to confront and engage with them directly" (Thornton).