Treating shell-shocked soldiers near the front speeds their recovery

Evidence

The American psychiatrist Thomas Salmon, sent to Europe on a mission to observe the phenomena of the war neuroses before the Americans entered the conflict on April 2, 1917, already developed the idea of a therapy of immediacy, now known under the name of forward psychiatry. “Forward” should be understood to mean “up at the front.” Salmon noted, in fact, “that soldiers treated near the battlefront, close enough to hear the sound of cannon fire, recovered more quickly than if they had been treated in the rear.” — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 3133

Categorization

• XREF: The proximity effect is a striking empirical phenomenon that connects to modern PIE (proximity-immediacy-expectancy) principles and to the materialization of trauma — relevant to Malabou’s claims about the embodied, non-psychoanalytic dimension of war trauma.
• SEED: The counterintuitive finding that treating soldiers while still under artillery fire aids recovery is a strong essay hook on how environment, not insight, shapes healing.