Citation for 1998 Dissertation Prize: Paul Lerner, "Hysterical Men: War, Neurosis, and German Mental Medicine, 1914-1921," Columbia University, 1996.

In his dissertation Lerner examines the response of German psychiatrists and neurologists to the epidemic of male hysteria during and after the first World War. He places the doctor's preference for the diagnosis of hysteria in the context of rapid industrialization, accident insurance legislation, and medical critiques of social welfare, arguing that their newly "rationalized" system of medicine, modeled on industry, channeled neurotics from the battlefield to the clinic and back into the labor force. As the doctors reestablished hysterics' control over their own bodies, they also gained increasing control over their patients. Lerner considers patient resistance to rationalized care and concluded that the male hysteria diagnosis furthered neuropsychiatry's professional claims, subordinating patients to industrial rationalization while freeing them from the dangers of combat and military punishment.