IN SEPTEMBER 1918 IN BUDAPEST, the 5th International Psychoanalytic Congress organizes a special tribute to the war neuroses. Speakers include Sandor Ferenczi, Karl Abraham, and Ernst Simmel, who served as doctors in the war from the beginning and made crucial observations.

Their remarks on psychological trauma prompted Freud to write the introduction to the symposium's proceedings; he even felt the need to return to these serious topics in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

The book is of particular interest to historians studying the issue of war and its aftermath, as well as to psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, social workers, and humanitarian organizations who welcome, listen to, assist, and care for soldiers and civilian populations today facing new forms of wartime violence.

Due to its duration, the evolution of tactics and strategies, as well as the violence of which it was the theater, the First World War entered a new level. On the battlefield, the intensity of fire, linked to the mass use of machine guns and artillery, resulted in a new form of physical injuries, affecting vision and smell.

The use, when necessary, of sharp weapons during hostilities complemented an image of excessive violence. However, we emphasize that the fighters on the front were not the only ones severely affected by the violence. Prisoners of war were also victims of violence, as were civilians, extensively and systematically, much more than we believe, both during periods of raids and withdrawals of soldiers and due to the exits from cities and villages, the anxiety associated with the uncertainty of the fate of loved ones who had been conscripted or who went missing on the front, as well as mourning, bombings, and blockades, military occupation, and even deportations and massacres.