War Psychosis In Pat Barker's Regeneration

We all have those moments when we run away from our problems. Some may try to skip a school day in order to miss a test, while others try to hide themselves to avoid being picked to openly discuss a topic in front of the class. Although we try to run away from the problems we face in our lives, the only way to solve the problem is to embrace it. Pat Barker reveals this theme not only to our general lives but to those of soldiers facing war neurosis in WWI. Her novel, Regeneration, portrays the various characters' struggles with combating the effects of war neurosis at the psych ward, Craiglockhart. Through escape, homosexuality, and the striving for masculinity, the responses of three major characters, Siegfried Sassoon, Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, and Billy Prior, are examined to show their struggles toward the traumas of World War I. Each character emphasizes the need to escape from their war neurosis close to and upon arriving at
He neglects his problems through dissociation. Prior is able to dissociate from his own "awareness to avoid pain" (Vickroy). He limits himself to only writing on a pad to communicate. His dissociation, too, causes Prior to back himself into his mind. Priors dreams are extraordinarily clear as he dreams of himself holding a fellow soldier's eye, named Towers, in his hand. The hole in the eye represents "a hole in reality for him", and "his narcissistic integrity is shattered" (Mukherjee). Prior struggles to get away from these dreams and society. He feels no civilian in Britain can relate to the experiences he has witnessed. He tries to shut himself farther from the people in his life. Pat Barker shows this dissociation by making Prior's inner character hostile to everything in his surroundings. In that case, trying to escape from a problem or a situation causes more problems to