War and psychiatry: examining the diffusion theory in light of the insanity defence in post-World War I Britain

Abstract

Martin Stone has argued that World War I taught doctors of the British medical corps a number of important lessons about psychiatric theory and practice; these lessons subsequently influenced civilian psychiatry, resulting in a broader awareness and concern with psychiatric problems, a new receptivity to psychotherapy, and innovations in outpatient treatment. Stone's thesis can be characterized as the 'diffusion theory'.

However, an examination of medico-legal developments in reference to the insanity defence in post-World War I England demonstrates that civilian society and the legal establishment may also resist the application of wartime psychiatric lessons and techniques when they threaten familiar concepts of responsibility, and when the medical establishment is perceived as encroaching on the traditional domain of the law. This alternative view of the relationship between war and psychiatry is marked by a process of denial and the desuetude of military psychiatric doctrine.