World War One trauma and masculinity

This thesis investigates how psychoanalysis might explain masculinity, and how that could relate to the way a soldier may have experienced trauma in World War One. It looks at the letters and retrospective accounts soldiers wrote describing their feelings about fear, and it focusses on key moments that may align with psychoanalytic ideas throughout the three chapters. It is also attempts to explain the way soldiers may have understood masculinity, and how that understanding may have impacted the way they tried to hide their fear from each other. It likewise examines the path of how masculinities ideals could have been internalised by a little boy during the same period as the superego formed, which might be described as the first appearance from the masculine ideals. Therefore, this thesis it is about how psychoanalysis understands masculinity, and how that understanding could have impacted war trauma in World War One.