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The Evil Hours

By Jack Mallory (reviewer)

The Evil Hours: a Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
by David Morris
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015)

"The central image of post-traumatic stress is that of Ishmael at the end of Moby Dick, floating atop Queequeg's coffin, looking out over the vastness of the sea."

WTF? I'm reading a book about PTSD and the author is quoting some VA shrink, describing a scene from a book about a goddam whale? Actually, yes and for good reason. David Morris's "The Evil Hours: a Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" contains plenty of medical/neurological information and tons of psychological references. But the author is a journalist, and an ex-Marine infantry officer (yeah, yeah, I know there's no such thing as an ex-Marine) who can actually write. The book is a joy to read about a joyless subject, because he believes that "Stories in the form of literature helps to understand the enigma of survival in a way that no other technology can." Morris incorporates prose and poetry from thousands of years of thought about war and its effects, from Homer to Sassoon, to O'Brien to "make meaning out of chaos," as he puts it.

I've been reading about PTSD at least since 1995, when Jonathan Shay published "Achilles in Vietnam" and I had realized that maybe books could teach me something about my experiences, and reactions to those experiences. The book is written "from the inside"; Morris knows through experience about the causes, symptoms, and various treatments for PTSD. Reading it is also an experience "from the inside." If I were to read a book about physics, or math, it would be an experience "from the outside"; if I understood it at all, it would be as an outsider, looking in. Reading "The Evil Hours" is a "Yeah, been there, done that" experience: it provides both objective and subjective understanding of what it means to experience and deal with trauma.

Morris subtitles his book a biography of PTSD. By this he intends to introduce PTSD as a character in its own right; not just a disorder or disease, but as a phenomenon with a life, a history of its own. PTSD has been with us as long as trauma has been part of human life, which is to say, forever. This was Shay's point in "Achilles in Vietnam," and in his second book, "Odysseus in America." The first half of "The Evil Hours" introduces PTSD: its causes (Morris focuses on combat PTSD, although he also considers its other causes), who suffers from it and why and its history, from ancient Mesopotamia to the present. He is especially detailed in describing the connection between VVAW and the first work on PTSD during and after the Vietnam War.

Throughout the book, the author emphasizes that the causes, symptoms, and effective treatments for PTSD are, if not as varied as the number of people affected, enormously varied. "Trauma is much like cancer in that each individual subspecies has a different impact on the individual," Morris says. Especially for veterans or others who have been in PTSD therapy groups, this comes as no surprise, but at least offers some reassurance for those of us who have overly or covertly compared our trigger events and symptoms like guys in a gym making comparisons. How many times have I heard a new veteran in group say, "I don't really deserve to be here, plenty of guys saw worse than I did," or, "I had it pretty easy over there, I don't know why this bothers me so much."

I was especially interested in Morris's treatment of Moral Injury as a symptom, something I've been concerned with since Shay introduced me to it in 1995. What I would describe as a sense of social and emotional betrayal, a feeling that one has had one's ethical foundation knocked out from underneath by the realities of war, that one's moral surety is gone. Morris says, "There comes a point in every man's life when he sees that the magician's hat is empty, that the government and the church are run by fools, and that virtue is far rarer than he'd been led to believe... the things I had seen in Iraq made it impossible for me to believe in the normal fictions that most people cling to in their daily lives: the lie that the world is safe, the lie that society is just, the lie that governments can be trusted, the lie that bad people are punished." I'm not sure, in fact, that everyone does see that, or that he/she sees it like a veteran does. Reading that was one of the many been there, done that moments in reading "The Evil Hours."

Another trauma symptom that resonates with me is the description of what anthropologists and he call liminality, "the palpable sense of not belonging, of being 'on the other side of something' after trauma." Referring to the work of an historian of WWI, Morris describes the state of "veterans being trapped in a kind of 'No Man's Land' ... unmade and remade by the war ... belonging neither to the war nor to the society he fought for." Morris quotes a female Iraq war veteran, "I feel like a Martian." Again, been there, done that.

The second half of the book deals with the variety of treatments for PTSD, from psychological/emotional therapy through drugs and alternatives such as yoga. I am often quite skeptical about alternative medicine, but Morris seems to do a fair and thorough job of looking at its possibilities.

The last chapter looks at the possibility that combat trauma can create positive psychological and emotional characteristics. Some researchers have gone so far as to call it Post Traumatic Growth (although no one seems to be willing to refer to it as PTG, but I will). I share a feeling with an old, dear friend of mine who survived an especially aggressive breast cancer: we wouldn't wish our experiences on anyone, but they made us who we are and we wouldn't undo them. Seems like there ought to be some single word that describes that sentiment, but if there is, I'm unaware of it.

I won't go into details about my downsides, you all know them. The usual anxiety, numbing, hyper startle, substance abuse, etc. But I have a set of priorities that I didn't have before the war, and perhaps wouldn't have had without it. What's important, what's not. What to worry about, when to say f—— it. When I taught high school, I had to avoid eye contact with the other Vietnam vet during faculty meetings. As other faculty and administrators went on about this, that, and the other trivia, Steve and I were tempted to roll our eyes at each other, start to snicker, and have to leave the room. On a less trivial level, I pay attention to current events; I take positions, write letters, vote, get out in the street. And I know enough, now, to get away from current events. I hike, I kayak, I get the f—— away from the squirrels in my head. The war, and recovering from the war, taught me these things.

Morris, of course, says it better than I: "A lot of ridiculous demands and expectations that drive people crazy stateside don't exist in a war ... In a strange way, you are free. The only thing you can lose is your life ... There was a new faith, derived from a simple declarative statement that echoed in moments of pain and crisis: Well, this sucks, but it's better than Ramadi. I also learned how to ignore things that were beyond my control, like death."

Read the damn book. It's better than I can describe it.

But what about Ishmael? Driven to disaster by a mad captain, his whole world suddenly destroyed, sitting on his best friend's coffin alone in the ocean. If that doesn't say something to you about war and PTSD, you're not listening!

Jack Mallory is a long-time VVAW member.