The Origins of the Anglo-American Research Alliance and the Incidence of Civilian Neuroses in Second World War Britain

From August 1940 until May 1941, Germany subjected Great Britain to air bombardments by night and day. Desmond Flower recalled how London shook as the first bombs hit the docks, while in early September 1940, nurse Frances Faviell described London’s casualties as, ‘‘bodies, limbs, blood and flesh mingled with little hats, coats, and shoes’’. Despite this onslaught and the ‘‘‘Blind savagery’’ of night attacks’, The Times described a courageous dignity among the citizenry. Continuing this pattern in his private correspondence, the Edinburgh psychiatrist David Kennedy Henderson would write in the New Year to his American colleague, Adolf Meyer, that: