War & Trauma - Museum Dr. Guislain
01/11/2013 - 30/06/2014
Almost a century after the First World War broke out, the In Flanders Fields museum and Museum Dr. Guislain cooperated to bring a double exposition about the human suffering that war brings along. The one in the In Flanders museum in Ypres covers the general medical care at the warfront, while Museum Dr. Guislain in Ghent brings the focus on the psychological impact.
In the first part of the exhibtion War and Trauma, the human suffering in World War I in explored. Soldiers coming back from the front, showed strange symptoms: trembling, impaired vision, nightmares. This cluster of symptoms was called 'shellshock', named after the shock effect of exploding grenades. In the museum you can see the slow evolution of acceptance of trauma's or psychological wounds caused by war.
The second part of the exhibtion handles how the Germans reacted in World War II to psychiatry, their practice of degeneration theory, which resulted the euthanasia and sterilisation programmation of psychiatric patients.
The third part is focussed on war photography. It investigates how photograps can change the way we percieve a war, how it manipulates the public opinion. Do we percieve the war as a good war or a bad war? It further investigates on how the photographers deal with the horror, threaths and violence they are confronted with.
Finally the last part threats the broadening of the concept of trauma outside its context of war and to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
In the first part of the exhibtion War and Trauma, the human suffering in World War I in explored. Soldiers coming back from the front, showed strange symptoms: trembling, impaired vision, nightmares. This cluster of symptoms was called 'shellshock', named after the shock effect of exploding grenades. In the museum you can see the slow evolution of acceptance of trauma's or psychological wounds caused by war.
The second part of the exhibtion handles how the Germans reacted in World War II to psychiatry, their practice of degeneration theory, which resulted the euthanasia and sterilisation programmation of psychiatric patients.
The third part is focussed on war photography. It investigates how photograps can change the way we percieve a war, how it manipulates the public opinion. Do we percieve the war as a good war or a bad war? It further investigates on how the photographers deal with the horror, threaths and violence they are confronted with.
Finally the last part threats the broadening of the concept of trauma outside its context of war and to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
© All the information used for this exhibition is owned by Museum Dr. Guislain