Book description
This unique and penetrating book surveys 100 years of military
inefficiency from the Crimean War, through the Boer conflict, to the
disasterous campaigns of the First World War and the calamities of the
Second. It examines the social psychology of military organizations,
provides case studies of individual commanders and identifies an
alarming pattern in the causes of military disaster.
Dr Norman F. Dixon, M. B.E., Fellow of the British Psychological
Society, is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at University College London.
After ten years' commission in the Royal Engineers, during which
time he was wounded ('largely through my own incompetence'), Professor
Dixon left the Army in 1950 and entered university where he obtained a
first-class degree in Psychology. He received the degrees of Doctor of
Philosophy in 1956 and Doctor of Science in 1972, and in 1974 was
awarded the University of London Carpenter Medal 'for work of
exceptional distinction in Experimental Psychology'. He holds an
honorary doctorate from the University of Lund. His other books
include: Preconscious Processing, Subliminal Perception: the nature
of a controversy, which was described by Professor George Westby
as 'one of the most substantial works of British psychology of recent
years', and Our Own Worst Enemy, which New Society
praised as 'an elegant play on man's chaotic nature...diverse and arresting'.
