David Gee explores the mental health issues of youth recruitment on ‘Armed Forces Day’

PTSD, Suicide, Alcoholism, Child Recruitment, and Violence: Aspects of Mental Health in today’s British Armed Forces

Although not all veterans are severely affected, a military career carries significant mental health risks, particularly at times of war when substantial numbers of psychiatric casualties are usual. Research from the last decade shows that certain mental health-related problems in the armed forces, particularly harmful alcohol use and post-deployment violent behaviour, are a serious problem. Those who have left the forces during the last decade show markedly higher rates of a number of mental health-related problems, particularly PTSD and harmful levels of drinking. These issues are of particular concern in relation to ‘Armed Forces Day’, which serves among other things as a recruitment opportunity for the armed forces. But what are the mental health implications for those who enlist, particularly the youngest recruits who are most vulnerable to these risks?

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Kabbalah and Sigmund Freud: Joseph Berke uncovers The Hidden Freud

The Covert Freud and the Lights He Lit on Western Culture

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There were many Freuds: the scholar, the academic, the researcher, the neurologist, the founder of the new discipline: psychoanalysis, and Viennese professional. All were noted for their rejection of religion and their identification with prevalent German culture. This was the picture painted by Freud’s principal  biographers: Ernest Jones, Peter Gay and Ronald Clark. They agreed that Freud came from an assimilated Jewish background and he was a completely secular intellectual.

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Psychoanalyst and playwright Antonio Quinet discusses the origins of his play about Freud

Hilda and Freud: Collected Words

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Antonio Quinet in the performance of the play (Freud Museum, 2013)

This is a play on Hilda Doolittle’s analysis with Freud. The play is based on H. D.´s (Hilda Doolittle) Tribute to Freud, the letters, as well as some of her poetry, that she exchanged with Freud and her literary circle. Hilda, a forty-seven-year old poet met Freud, then in his late seventies, in 1930s Vienna. It was the beginning of a startling “love affair”, with exchanges of gifts, letters, and flowers, within and beyond the psychoanalytical setting.  It was written to be performed  by The Unconscious on Stage Company  at the Freud Museum London from 12th to 16th November 2013.

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Meg Harris Williams reveals the true story of Oedipus

Suffering into Truth: The Achievement of Oedipus

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Given that the story of Oedipus is foundational to psychoanalytic thinking it is surprising that there has been relatively little attention paid to Sophocles’ play Oedipus Tyrannus, even though the play is the reason that the myth has survived and was noticed by Freud some 2400 years later. This is partly because psychoanalysts tend to assume the play and the myth are the same thing.

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Leticia Franieck and Michael Günter: On Latency

On Latency: Individual Development, Narcissistic Impulse, Reminiscence, and Cultural Ideal

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In psychoanalytical terms latency is defined as a developmental period in which psychosexual maturation marks time – it occurs after the oedipal phase and ends with the beginning of puberty, and is a period of emotional abeyance between the confusion and dramas of childhood and adolescence.

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