Amelie and Daisy’s interview with therapist Denise Poynter,
24 Aug 2020 – audio transcription
Daisy
I’m Daisy from the East Sussex Youth Cabinet, and this is Amelie. And today we are interviewing shellshock specialist Denise Poynter as part of Make (Good) Trouble’s Project Poppy.
Denise has written a study of women and their experience of shellshock and trauma in the First World War. So, Denise, could you introduce yourself please, and tell us a bit about what you do?
Denise
My name is Denise Poynter. I work as a DBT therapist, Dialectical Behaviour Therapist, and I’m also taking the opportunity to train in some other therapies as well.
Daisy
What interested you in the stories of women in shellshock in the First World War?
Denise
As I was growing up, I was always quite interested in the stories that my grandparents would tell me about the First World War and this very strange condition that quite a lot of the soldiers seemed to have which left them very traumatised and behaving in very bizarre ways. And the general view, it seemed to be at the time, was that we don’t talk about them and we don’t talk about it.
And then, when I started at university, I got the option to do a couple of long essays, projects and stuff. And I thought, well, it’s now an opportunity for me to look into this a little bit more. And I did go down the traditional route of reading a lot of Siegfried Sassoon’s memoirs and Wilfred Owen, etc. and that just increased the interest even more.
From there, I got the opportunity to do a research studentship – and my tutor, bless her, I’m sure she won’t mind, sent me off for the experience of the interview and I didn’t think I’d get it. But when I explained what I would like to do, they went and found some more funding and said, we’d like you to come along and do your doctorate as well. But at that point, it was actually looking at the impact on the families of the soldiers [who had shellshock]. And I struggled to find very much information, if I’m honest.
I struggled at the time to find anything on women, but I duly went down to the archives every day for about six months to a year. And I did eventually start to find something with women in. My tutor, my mentor at the time, had actually said: ‘Well, good luck with that. I don’t think you’ll find anything’. Of course, that was a little bit like a red rag to a bull, so I was determined to go and find something then.
A little anecdote to that was when I was in the archives, where you’re supposed to be very, very quiet, I found something where it said this nurse has shellshock and I almost jumped out of my seat and I kind of let out a very sort of scream, because I half-remembered where I was, and I almost got thrown out. So, that was quite a pivotal moment for me that – I found it! Because once I’d found something, it was then a little bit easier to find other stuff.
Amelie
So how did trauma affect women in World War One?
Denise
For a lot of the nurses and the women in the First World War, the general view was that they were protected from the front line. They had nothing to do with anything being near the shells and the bombs and the gunfire. When some women have actually said, you know, ‘what can we do to help?’ I think the response was, ‘My good woman, go home and sit still. This is for us to do.’
And at the same time, running parallel to that, there was a huge amount of development. It was evolving, if you like, into understanding what it was that the soldiers were suffering from. What was this thing called shellshock? Why were these soldiers, that were being exposed to bombs and this kind of thing, suffering from something that occurs after the shells had gone off? And that’s how it started.
But then the doctors and the neurologists and the psychiatrists and psychologists started to say, well actually there are some people that are suffering from this and they haven’t even been to France. So how can this be? And there was a lot of research into this and they said it wasn’t just the consequence of being near the bombs or being in the trenches. It was actually more to do with the fear, and the lack of sleep, and the fear that you could lose your life in the next five, ten minutes or whatever.
And they started to think differently then. They said it wasn’t specifically to do with being near the trenches, it was more to do with something psychological. And with that, I thought, there are actually a lot of females and there are a lot of nurses that are near the front line. So what’s happening to them?
A lot of the hospitals that they worked in, the casualty clearing stations, were constantly being bombed because they had to keep moving. And some of the stationary hospitals, they lost that name because they weren’t stationary, and they had to keep moving to get out of the front line. So I thought, it does seem like there are quite a lot of women that are being exposed to all this shelling and trauma – they’re not sleeping, they’re having to nurse people that are dying, etc – all the things that we now know can have an impact on people developing PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder].
And it came from there, really, and I thought, there’s got to be something going on. And of course, when I did start to look at some of the archives, it did seem that that was true. There were a few doctors that were saying, this woman is actually experiencing the same thing that the soldiers are. And there was one particular file that the doctor said, this woman is suffering from shellshock. Shellshock was a bit of an erroneous term/ There was no such thing as shellshock. It was just the name they gave at the time for psychological trauma.
There were some women at home [who were affected] because there were bombs in the south of the country and in London – but I didn’t find much on the women there because civilians were being bombed. But obviously, with the nurses and the VADs [Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses] going out into France and Flanders, they started to show very much the same kind of symptoms: shaking, sleeplessness, just pure fear when it looked like there was an air raid, they were really struggling to continue with their work. They had lots of strange symptoms: psychosomatic pains, headaches, all that kind of thing, crying, loss of sensation in limbs. But my work was essentially on the nurses and the VADs because they were out on the front line.
Amelie
So how was their trauma treated in World War One versus how it’s treated today?
Denise
It’s come a huge, huge, long way. We’ve got such a big understanding of trauma now. First of all, I don’t think they were treated at all because they thought, ‘well, you’re a woman, you didn’t go anywhere near the front line, so I think you just need to go home and have a rest and your family will look after you’, that kind of thing.
There were one or two special hospitals, St Vincent’s in London was specifically for nurses, so they were treated there. But it was also around about the time when anything neurological or psychological to do with women, was blamed on their sex and basically, there was the term hysteria which comes from – it’s called ‘the wandering womb’ – they thought that it was to do with them having a uterus that they behaved in the way they did. Obviously we’ve come a long way from there.
But they were very often told to just go home and rest, which might be helpful in some cases, but actually not helpful in a lot of cases. And yeah, that’s a brilliant question, but it’s quite a big one – there are an awful lot of things that have happened over the years to help us understand, because post-traumatic stress disorder was a term that was created after the Vietnam War. We never used that before then.
We might call it combat stress now, but essentially, the women wouldn’t have been treated… well, they wouldn’t have been given the urgency, put it that way. They had to treat soldiers pretty quickly to get them back out onto the front line. And back then, there were two types of treatment; one was seen to be a little bit brutal with electric shocks to force them back into functionality. And the other one was talking therapy, like psychodynamic therapy, which was coming along then with Sigmund Freud. So it was all very experimental.
Daisy
How would you describe shellshock?
Denise
Again, it’s a strange one because shellshock doesn’t actually exist, if we go through history. It’s there, they use the word, and the reason it’s there is because they originally thought that if you were in close proximity to an exploding shell, it affected the molecules in your brain and disrupted them so that your brain being responsible for your behaviour, so your behaviour changed.
There are lots of clips, you can look them up on YouTube and you can get hold of them at the archives, films of men kind of doing this strange lopsided gait, they’re very shaky and stunted. They thought that that’s what it was, that it was simply because the explosion from a shell had done something to your brainwaves.
But they soon found out – it crept up over 1914, 1915, 1916 – they did a lot more research, and they found out that a lot of soldiers who hadn’t even been to France and were nowhere near any of the bombs, were demonstrating the same symptoms. But that’s where it came from, they thought it was the shock from being near a shell, hence shellshock.
And they had to make something of it because so many soldiers were struggling and they needed the soldiers on the front line, so they had to really look into it and see what they could do.
Daisy
And why is it seen to only affect men?
Denise
Well, I suppose the simple answer to that is because there were far more men in the front line. It was seen as a soldier’s thing, if you like. Millions of men went out to fight in the First World War and they associated shellshock with being in the trenches. And women, I mean there were one or two women who managed to get in the trenches, I think they were they dressed up as men. We didn’t allow women in the trenches. So it became known as a masculine affliction simply because it was nearly all men that have it. And they associated it with being in the trenches and in the front line where women were supposed not to be. But as the war went on, more and more women were in that area, that forward zone, so they started to have to include women in their figures towards the end of the war once they knew a bit more about it.
Amelie
Do you think views about how the war affected women are changing?
Denise
I think that’s changed as each war has gone on, and I hope we don’t have any more wars. I know there are still some local ones, but I think each war that’s gone along, it’s changed slightly. In the Vietnam and Korean wars, there was a lot more acceptance and understanding that women could have post-traumatic stress disorder.
Just as a little anecdote, I did a talk a couple of years ago to the Royal College of Nursing, and it was only supposed to be an hour or so in the evening and most of the people that turned up were retired nurses. But there was a young lady sitting in the front row and she came up to me afterwards and said thank you on the basis that she was currently a military nurse, she had seen active service – I think she’d gone to Iraq – at one point she said, ‘I’m really pleased to hear what you said and the history of it, because I had thought I was going a little bit mad myself. But it’s made me realise that actually, some of the things I’ve been experiencing are quite understandable’, given that she’d been very close, she was serving on the front line as a nurse in the military today. So for that reason, I was quite pleased to have met her and realised that what I’d said made a little bit of a difference to her.
And I do know somebody who used to be a military psychiatrist, and he was quite intrigued with what I’d had to say, because he said there are a lot of women now that are coming forward with post-traumatic stress disordered symptoms on account of their military service as nurses.
So hopefully it’s changing because the other thing is, to me, it doesn’t feel like it’s a full story if you don’t include the women, it only feels like half the story. I think the women’s experience adds another dimension to it, because a lot of the nurses in the First World War, they were struggling with lack of sleep, being terrified.
And the other thing is, is that when nurses go in – because it’s a calling, I suppose – the idea is that you nurse somebody through an illness and they get well and you can send them home and that’s a nice thing to end on. But if you’re a military nurse, what you end up having to do is to nurse horrifically damaged soldiers and patch them up and get them back out into the front line. You’re actually nursing them to be put at risk again or to be killed. And that, in my mind, would mess with their heads a little bit, I guess. A lot of the people that they nursed actually died. So, that’s not a great ending. I think to have the woman’s perspective is actually quite an important one because I think their experience is slightly different.
Daisy
I found that really interesting, what you said about the fact that that was almost the point of being the nurse to make people better, whereas to make them better for them maybe to be back [on the front line] the next day, doesn’t seem so positive.
Denise
And I think there are some stories of nurses trying to keep the soldiers in the hospital beds so that they didn’t end up going back out to war again. Because it was inevitable that they’d get close to them and get to know them.
Daisy
What do you think are the consequences of not hearing women’s stories?
Denise
I think they have a different perspective to bring. I think because trauma isn’t just something related to men. I mean, nowadays we think we have what we call first responders, you know ambulance, paramedics, police, people in the fire service. They’re all susceptible to experiencing trauma.
Sometimes if you see something or you witness something or you’re involved in something, it can actually prompt a traumatic episode. And of course, as we know, firemen, policemen – they’re not men, there are women there as well. So whatever we learn about trauma, if we only learn it from the men’s side of view, I think, again, it’s just not a complete view.
And I think the other thing is, it’s interesting to have included them from the historical perspective, to know that it isn’t just women suffering from it now. They’ve suffered from it, or they’ve been potentially likely to be suffering from it, for the last 100 years or so and probably even before then.
Daisy
How do you do your research and where do you find your stories?
Denise
I spent a lot of my time researching using the National Archives down in Kew. I looked at a lot of the medical records that they keep down there. The records that were most helpful were the pension records because after the end of the war, in fact it was quite a long way after the end of the First World War, I think women weren’t actually allowed to claim a war pension until about 1925 and the war ended in 1918, so they had to wait seven years or so.
But the pension records and the medical records were really quite comprehensive. They were the application forms, they were the doctor’s records, they were the pension tribunal hearings. They literally told a really good story from beginning to end as to what the problem was, whether they were entitled to a pension.
There were lots of records at the Red Cross Archives and I also had to go around quite a lot of little local hospitals, psychiatric hospitals. There were quite a few nurses that were sent home to rest because we didn’t have an NHS then, they obviously had to be looked after by their families. And if they were really struggling, they often got sent to a local asylum. So there would be some records there. I travelled around a little bit, but the best resource was the archives at Kew. There were a lot of nurses’ diaries as well, which were quite interesting to read, to say how they felt and what symptoms they were experiencing during and after the war. I found my stories all over the place.
Daisy
It’s really, interesting how there are so many places that you can go to, and so many places that have kept such far-back records.
Denise
Yes, and there are some places that after a certain amount of time, they do destroy them. And I think that that felt to me like a crime at the time. I was saying, please don’t burn them. If they happened to find their way into my boot, I’ll look after them! They just feel to me like they’ve got something to say. It would be a shame to lose that history.
Amelie
Was there a story which most stood out to you from your research?
Denise
Yes, just the one. Her name was Mary Cleverley and if you go down to the archives, you will find her file. She’s the lady who her doctor said, this woman is suffering from shellshock. She’s the one that I nearly got thrown out of the archives for. So she’s quite important to me. I spent quite a long time researching through these ladies’ case notes and I have to say, as weird as this sounds, I felt like I got to know them.
I lived for a couple of years with these ladies, albeit they’ve been dead a long time. So you can make of that what you like! I still remember a lot of their names: Claire Adams, Grace Hughes – they all pop up to me now. I felt like I was needing to honour them and honour their memory and actually put their story forward. But Mary Cleverley’s the lady I remember very distinctly because she had a very long file. And that was the one where they actually put ‘shellshock’ next to her diagnosis.
And that’s where the title of my thesis came from: ‘the report on her transfer was shellshock’, that was her. She stands out in my memory a little bit.
She was a middle-class lady. I would imagine her being a bit Downton Abbey-like, if that makes sense. A lot of those nurses came from a bit of a protected background. She wasn’t married. She was in her early 20s. I don’t think she’d had an awful lot of experience. A lot of the things that were coming up as the symptoms, if we were to see her now, we probably would describe her as somebody with post-traumatic stress disorder.
I got to know her as best as you can get to know somebody in text, but she was just somebody who was actually really willing to go and give it a go. And then unfortunately suffered for it as a consequence. Her family did take great care of her when she came back, because there were an awful lot of these women that lived alone and when they came back, they self-medicated and unfortunately sought solace in drugs and alcohol, much like we see in a lot of the veterans now.
I think they were lucky if they had a family to come back to. And she seemed to be somebody who did have a family to come back to. If you ever get down to the archives look her up, she’s got a pretty hefty file.
Daisy
Do you think you would have liked to have lived at that time?
Denise
I would have loved to have lived at that time for several reasons. One, I thought the clothes were amazing and I would love to have worn the clothes. But I say yes simply because I would like to have experienced what it was like in that time. But I’m coming at it with the knowledge that I have now. So, I might have been a real pain and said, well, don’t do that dressing like that, you need to do it like this. But of course, they didn’t know that then.
It is interesting because they didn’t have the same freedoms that we have now. To be told you wanted to help in the First World War and then, by some General, to be told to ‘go home, my good woman, sit still’, would have been quite frustrating for a lot of women nowadays.
I think if I had a Doctor Who Tardis, I’d still like to pop back and be there and see what it was like for a bit.
Amelie
Definitely, I’m always conflicted about the idea of living in the past. On one hand, it sounds really amazing. I mean, you’re helping in the war and experiencing all those things. But on the other hand, I would get very frustrated very easily, especially by being told I need to go home and just sit still. Or even if I knew what I know now, and was in the past, and them not knowing how to do the dressings properly, I can feel I would get quite frustrated, would I have to not say anything?
Denise
To us now, some of the medical procedures they had would have been quite primitive. I mean, they were very ground-breaking at the time, I guess. The First World War was a time when they actually started to do a lot of reconstructive surgery. And there’s some great work on how that happened, having to rebuild faces and arms and things like that. They had prosthetic limbs which were wooden, metal. Now we’ve got all the amazing technology and it’s just not a match, really.
Daisy
How has your study of the First World War informed your work today?
Denise
The clients I see now, the trauma they have is not war-induced trauma. It’s trauma they’ve had in their own lives. But it’s helpful because the more you understand about trauma today – and from a historical perspective, there are some things that have changed dramatically in our understanding and there are also things that haven’t changed at all.
When I look back and read some of the psychiatrists’ and psychologists’ work from 1915 and 1916, they were saying then what we see now. Something happens that arrests the memory or shocks the memory or the brain into a way of thinking about it which is very, very difficult to shift. It creates a drama in the person’s head that they continue to play out on a daily basis, and it impedes and it affects the way that they live their current lives. So a therapist’s task is to go back into that moment and see if they can reframe it and reprocess it and reconstruct it in a more organised way.
Put simply, if you see something traumatic on a battlefield, what your brain will do is, it’ll go, ‘I can’t cope with this, I’m going to shut down. I’m going to keep you safe. I’m going to shut down’. And essentially bits of the brain turn themselves off. And if that person isn’t helped, those bits of the brain will keep replaying that trauma because it’s trying to make sense of it. It’s trying to say, ‘look, this thing was just too awful,’ and it’s either going to just keep replaying it as it was at the time, which is why you get flashbacks, or the brain will just shut down and it’ll find another way of dealing with it.
So the therapist will try and take that person back into that moment and say, look, as painful as it is to have a look at it and see if we can’t reconstruct it and put it in a way that your brain can make more sense of. And hopefully they will start to move forward and live the life that they want to do. Because a lot of people that have suffered from war-induced trauma, I mean their lives are unbearable as they are living them.
It’s interesting, I wouldn’t do anything else – quite an interesting transformation to study it and then go off and actually use it in my day-to-day life.
Daisy
Thank you so much for your time today, Denise. It’s been really interesting to hear all your thoughts and ideas about this.
Denise
You are very welcome. Can I ask you a question? How come you’re looking into this area? What’s prompted you to look into this? What’s the interest?
Amelie
I’ve always been quite a feminist and really interested in women’s history and quite recently I started being more active about it. I think people like the suffragettes were always like a really huge area of interest for me. That time in history is quite complex in my opinion, because it’s before radical feminism and all those movements but it’s just starting to show a little bit. This is very much my area of interest, and I love history. So, yes, it’s perfect for me.
Daisy
I’m actually really similar to Amelie. I’m really into feminism and women’s rights and stuff like that. And I thought would be really interesting to compare that to now. And because I know some things about World War One, but I don’t really know anything about the women and that made me really interested in how I could compare it to today.
Denise
There are some great books out there now that female historians have written about women, not just on the home front, but actually on the battlefront. I think, hopefully, having written what I did, it prompted a few of the female historians to write something. And strangely enough, it’s generally been female historians, on the back of what I put as well.
Amelie
Thank you.
Denise
You are very welcome. I’ve enjoyed it.