Editing W. H. R. Rivers (section)

=== Rivers and Sassoon ===
Sassoon came to Rivers in 1917 after publicly protesting against the war and refusing to return to his regiment, but was treated with sympathy and given much leeway until he voluntarily returned to France.<ref>{{cite book | first = Max | last = Egremont | title = Siegfried Sassoon: a Life | url = https://archive.org/details/siegfriedsassoon0000egre | url-access = registration | publisher = Farrar, Straus and Giroux | location = New York | year = 2005 | isbn = 0-374-26375-2 }}</ref> For Rivers, there was a considerable dilemma involved in "curing" his patients simply in order that they could be sent back to the [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]] to die. Rivers's feelings of guilt are clearly portrayed both in fiction and in fact. Through Pat Barker's novels and in Rivers's works (particularly ''Conflict and Dream'') we get a sense of the turmoil the doctor went through. As Sassoon wrote in a letter to [[Robert Graves]] (24 July 1918):

{{poemquote|O Rivers please take me. And make me
Go back to the war til it break me...}}

Rivers did not wish to "break" his patients, but at the same time he knew that it was their duty to return to the front and his duty to send them. There is also an implication (given the pun on Rivers's name along with other factors) that Rivers was more to Sassoon than just a friend.  Sassoon called him "father confessor", a point that [[Jean Moorcroft Wilson]] picks up on in her biography of Sassoon; however, Rivers's tight morals would have probably prevented a closer relationship from progressing:

{{blockquote|Rivers's uniform was not the only constraint in their relationship. He was almost certainly homosexual by inclination and it must quickly have become clear to him that Sassoon was too. Yet neither is likely to have referred to it, though we know that Sassoon was already finding his sexuality a problem. At the same time, as an experienced psychologist Rivers could reasonably expect Sassoon to experience "transference" and become extremely fond of him. [[Paul Fussell]] suggests in ''[[The Great War and Modern Memory]]'' ({{ISBN|0195019180}}) that Rivers became the embodiment of the male "dream friend" who had been the companion of Sassoon's boyhood fantasies. Sassoon publicly acknowledged that "there was never any doubt about my liking [Rivers]. He made me feel safe at once, and seemed to know all about me".

But Sassoon's description of the doctor in ''Sherston's Progress'', lingering as it does on Rivers's warm smile and endearing habits – he often sat, spectacles pushed up on forehead, with his hands clasped around one knee – suggests that it was more than liking he felt. And privately he was rather franker, telling Marsh, whom he knew would understand, that he "loved [Rivers] at first sight".}}

Not only Sassoon, but his patients as a whole, loved him and his colleague [[Frederic Bartlett]] wrote of him 
{{blockquote|Rivers was intolerant and sympathetic. He was once compared to [[Moses]] laying down the law. The comparison was an apt one, and one side of the truth. The other side of him was his sympathy. It was a sort of power of getting into another man's life and treating it as if it were his own. And yet all the time he made you feel that your life was your own to guide, and above everything that you could if you cared make something important out of it.<ref>{{cite journal | author = Bartlett, F. C. | year = 1922 | title = Obituary notice of W. H. R. Rivers | journal = [[The Eagle (magazine)|The Eagle]] | pages = 2–14 }}</ref>}}

Sassoon described Rivers's [[Doctor-patient relationship#Bedside manner|bedside manner]] in his letter to Graves, written as he lay in hospital after being shot (a head wound that he had hoped would kill him – he was bitterly disappointed when it did not):

{{poemquote|But yesterday my reasoning Rivers ran solemnly in,
With peace in the pools of his spectacled eyes and a wisely omnipotent grin;
And I fished in that steady grey stream and decided that I
after all am no longer the Worm that refuses to die.<ref>Letter to Robert Graves, 1917, The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, Faber and Faber.</ref>}}

Rivers was well known for his compassionate, effective and pioneering treatments; as Sassoon's testimony reveals, he treated his patients very much as individuals.