The article gives an account of the discourses on and representations of emotions and illnesses that arose within an emotional community made up of senior military officers, members of the medical corps, and soldiers throughout three wars: World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. It is based entirely on a series of written and oral testimonies of the participants. Thus, using the concept of emotional community, certain words and phrases were identified —with their semantic and grammatical variations— through which the definitions of the soldiers' behavioral disorders and personality changes had passed. This is a subject that must be studied over a long period of time in order to observe how certain terms came to predominate over others.