DOES IT HURT INSIDE? POST-VIETNAM SYNDROME
By VVAW
[Printer-Friendly Version] [Your search terms have been highlighted. To remove highlighting, click here.] From "The 1st Casualty" - Volume 2,
number 1 (July 1972)
Until recently, psychological "disturbances" developing
from combat experiences have been viewed as something that really
affects only a few people. The classic example of a man suffering
"combat fatigue" has been with us since World War I.
The word is never passed on about the people who, for one reason
or another were able to maintain under such stress, and upon returning
to their society are unable to adjust and go through their own
form of "combat fatigue."
Today a phenomenon has developed from our current war in Vietnam
in the form of the troops coming home and "talking about
the war." Not only talking about what the war isn't, but
what it is as they lived it. As an outgrowth of this move on behalf
of these returning veterans and current trends being developed
in group sessions some puzzling questions are beginning to be
answered.
Dr. C.F. Shatan, past professor and Clinic Coordinator of the
Post Doctoral Psychotherapy Training Program of New York University,
while working in rap sessions with New York members of VVAW, developed
a diagnosis of the situation calling it the "Post Vietnam
Syndrome." The syndrome tends to be broken down to roughly
nine different aspects, some or all of which can be generally
relative to any individual.
- Guilt feelings
- Self punishment
- Feelings of being a scapegoat
- Identification with the aggressor -- no outlet for bitterness
and hatred
- Dead place in oneself -- "psychic numbing"
- Alienation -- xenophobia
- Doubts about ability to love and trust other human beings
again
- Post Vietnam Syndrome is really distorted mourning arising
out of active discouragement of open grief by the military in
a climate of death
- Need to account for apparent absence of similar syndrome
in W.W.II vets. Two are of particular interest -- unusual group
cohesion and counter-insurgency training (with habituation to
Universal Terror as chief weapon)
Dr. Shatan also observed that "Vietnam vets need intensive
working through of their experiences (debriefing) to overcome
an official attitude of dehumanizing 'antigrief.'"
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