Originally Posted by
Catullus64
Got a question that I don't think is exactly about weapons, armour, or tactics, but is definitely related to historical warfare.
I'm looking for insights and/or sources about 'modern' psychological phenomena related to warfare and their existence (or nonexistence) in pre-modern battle. To what extent do you think soldiers in pre-gunpowder periods experienced what we might now call post-traumatic stress? If it did occur in significant numbers, how might the people of those periods have thought about or treated it?
I have a loosely informed picture of how modern ideas of battlefield-related trauma and stress are tied into modern life and the conditions of modern war, but it's just that: loose. I know that formal scholarship into the phenomena is nearly all informed by experience of the World Wars and later. I would appreciate any good writing on this subject (either academic, popular, or amateur). Primary sources are the most welcome of all, even (or perhaps especially) if they don't use modern psychological jargon.