Yes it was a horrendous few years.
'shell shock' was an awful thing that plagued survivors for years and years.
"Shell shock"?
You mean PTSD.
It is interesting tho, how words and concepts stick and stick, if not uprooted a bit. Many people tend to traditionally view "shell shock" as something unique to WW1-2-Vietnam war, where the term was used a lot.
In reality, it is merely a reflection of the growing understanding of psychology. Since forever warriors suffered PTSD from combat experiences.
Again, traditionally, people tend to limit "shell shock" to the litteral experience - "oh, it's when someone stands next to a shell that explodes, and are shocked by it. it was very common in ww1"
while in reality, "shell shock" or PTSD will strike nearly all and any soldier, from the moment they participate in a "contact" situation (from the moment life-and-death is thrown in their face)
It is only that most media outlets, old and new, are reluctant to "advertise" that about war-participation - "fight for your country! be prepared for lasting psychological problems!"
/nitpickery
Nice photo-thread, I like that you added little captions, for the aspies!
It's funny Zegh but I considered putting "or what we now term PTSD or combat stress" after the words shell shock. I just didn't bother. I question myself now as to why I used that term. I think it was because Grandad had shell shock - according to my mother and aunts. It is the only term they ever used. But yes, you are correct.
Thanks for noticing
Heh, yeah, I assumed you used it because you have gotten it "established" in your mind, through a strong association, like a family member, or a story heard in childhood, or something like that.
Sometimes people really get hung up on words, I have an aspie friend who refuses to acknowledge that "sociopath" and "psychopath" are the same thing. He _insists_ that these words mean two slightly different, yet related conditions.
I try and try and try to explain to him that we humans MAKE words, we APPLY words to things, and sometimes we conciously stop to re-apply a word. Like we did with "mongoloid" and "downs syndrome", but he REALLY struggles to comprehend it. He should be smart enough, but on this subject, he simply won't allow it to happen, to him every concept in the universe has a "god-given" word, and words cannot be changed - so since the words are
1. sociopath, and 2. psychopath - TWO words, they _MUST_ represent two concepts.
To him, he always falls back to that. I've even shown him articles that explicitly explain that the two words are _SYNONYMS_ but he insists that "it is open to debate", and maintains that the two words represent two different (yet related) ideas.
Frustrating how much trust people put in words, completely forgetting _we invent_ words...
This actually manifests in other ways to him, for example, he is hopelessly uncritical to movies and games. It's all "good" to him, because he cannot acknowledge error (which is very weird... ), he sees everything as intended, and therefore flawless in its own way. (in the same way, he sees a movie plot as a cosmic static, something that could never have been something else than what it currently is, therefore he never sees how a movie could be better, or where a movie did a flaw)
Granted, he has tastes and preferences in movies, but only take it as a matter of taste, rarely acknowledging differences in sheer quality.
I tested him once, telling him about the explanation offered in the movie "2012", that the scientists in the movie explained the entire end of the world with "the neutrinos have mutated"
My friend is more than intelligent enough to realize that "neutrinos mutating" is fucking bullshit, but he was nothing but deeply confused. He was trying so hard to figure out how, how, HOW could something as pointless as "mutating neutrinos" cause the end of the world.
I had to EXPLAIN to him "NO. the _SCRIPTWRITERS_ fucked up. You are right! Neutrinos CANNOT mutate! The PEOPLE who WROTE THE PLOT - - - MADE A GOOF! And did not even CARE about their goof! They are flawed!"
This was news to him