Psychology and war
A collection of articles from our archive on psychology and war, and paths to peace.
08 November 2019
We bring you our archive content on the role of psychology in war, including interviews, reports and articles.
Kubo Yoshitoshi and the psychology of war and peace: An adapted extract from 'Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki', by Ran Zwigenberg; plus a review of the book.
Letters on Ukraine - from those impacted by the conflict. Plus 'Callousness, compassion, and the Ukraine crisis'; plus 'The spectre of war was ever-present', around rehabilitation and Ukraine.
Psychology and the great war, 1914-1918
Ben Shephard considers our discipline’s involvement.
Veterans, horses, and the discovery of 'with'
Professor Mari Fitzduff, on 'Our brains at war'
An unusual appearance of a First World War soldier
The Commandos, mental mutiny and mindset
'There is a spectrum of responses to killing far off enemies' - Professor Peter Lee on drone warfare
'The more who die, the less we care' - Paul Slovic
From the bomb to Apollo 13: Bowlby and the Cold War
The will of war
David Lewis-Hodgson on how both sides in World War I sought to explain and ‘treat’ its trauma.
Masculinity, trauma and 'shell-shock'
Tracey Loughran delivers a fitting tribute to the men who suffered in the First World War, and in more modern conflicts.
Non-violence, truth, and political behaviour
Phantom suffering?
Joanna Bourke looks into physical and emotional wounding after the First World War.
Filming trauma
Edgar Jones explores the making of an innovative film designed to show the treatment of soldiers suffering from shell shock.
Air raids and the crowd – citizens at war
Edgar Jones explores how British people responded to air raids during the Second World War, and what this tells us about coping under extreme stress.
Bringing home World War Two’s ‘awkward lot’
Clare Makepeace on the use of Civil Resettlement Units and their possible lessons for today.
Psychology to win the war and make a better peace
Ben Harris on a 1943 book that sold 400,000 copies.
Sex in psychological warfare
Herbert A. Friedman on the why and how of an unusual form of propaganda in the Second World War.
Free will inside the Nazi death camps
Christian Jarrett for the Research Digest.
Citizens at war: air raids, terrorism and the crowd
Ella Rhodes reports on Edgar Jones' talk on civilians during wartime.
From the trenches to the present day
Ella Rhodes reports from a one-day symposium ‘Stories of Psychology: War and Its Aftermath’, and we present a video of Jamie Hacker Hughes’s talk on 99 years of British military history.
Beyond the mythology of war
Jon Sutton reports on talks from Sir Simon Wessely and Ben Shephard.
From civvy street to theatre of war
Jon Sutton talks to Jamie Hacker Hughes about veteran’s mental health.
A uniformed clinical psychologist in the British Army
Captain Duncan Precious gives his personal reflections on a unique role.
War and peace
Ed Cairns gives practical recommendations for ending war and promoting peace.
War, what is it good for?
An exclusive chapter from 'Mismatch: How our Stone Age Brain Deceives us Every Day', by Ronald Giphart and Mark van Vugt.
The Yellow Birds
John Marzillier on Kevin Powers’ novel about a soldier returning from war and what it can teach us about trauma.
Study conducted during war finds one symptom that is especially indicative of PTSD vulnerability
Emma Young for the Research Digest.
Untying the hardest knots
Dan Jones delves into the work of Eran Halperin, in the field of conflict resolution.
Screening troops for psychological vulnerability is futile
Christian Jarrett for the Research Digest.
Can psychology find a path to peace?
As the UK's Parliament votes to allow bombing in Syria, we ask - are there evidence-based ways to resolve this conflict?
