Colleagues, Another colleague in the history department sent the following e-mail to me yesterday regarding some research he is doing. >...to look at the fear of nuclear attack, particularly in the minds of >>children, many of whom could not get adults to talk candidly with them >and thus >invented their own doomsday scenarios. They want some >assessment of >consequences e.g. a "live now for tomorrow we die" >mentality. My own >understanding of this subject is military history >textbook level. Can you >point me towards some useful sources or give me >the name of someone in your >department who might be up on this? > Second, I am dealing with Vera Brittain in one of my military >history classes. She was a young British girl who served as a Red Cross >Nurse in World War I. She lost her brother, her boyfriend, and two other >good friends in the trenches. She went to Oxford University after the war, >where her preoccupation with the war was laughed at by younger students who >had missed the debacle. She came to feel that she was a witch, and finally >could not look in a mirror because she was convinced she was growing a >beard. I understand that, at some level, she saw herself as monstrous, for >having lived when so many good people didn't (survivor guilt), and that she >felt out of place, a grotesque relic, but could you direct me as to why she >might have had this specific delusion i.e. the witch and the beard? We tried to provide some leads for him on both issues. For example, research on "Terror Management Theory" (Pyszczynski & Greenburg) for the first and that Brittain's delusion could be categorized as "mood congruent" if the concepts of witch and beard are conceived of as evil or bad, given her depression. A department colleague, having read her story, felt she would likely be diagnosed PTSD today. There are no doubt some psychoanalytic speculations to explain the delusions but, we generally stay away from giving such to others on campus so as not to tarnish our departmental image. I thought I would run his request for info up the TIPS flagpole (with his permission) for any other insights or leads. These are the kinds of difficult questions we often get from colleagues in other disciplines who think we know everything about behavior. Thanks. George Goedel, Chairperson Department of Psychology Northern Kentucky University Highland Hts., KY 41099-2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
