War on a Sunny Afternoon

Sam Osherson

As I walked into the windowless seminar room at 9:30 am on a sunny day at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, CA., to teach Psych 711: Iraqi War Vets and their Families, I worked hard to muster energy for the day. I felt sleepy, nervous, and painfully aware that a sandy beach and blue water lay just across the street from the hotel.

The nine students and I were there to understand more about the psychological consequences of combat on soldiers and their families, and ways to respond therapeutically to such trauma.

 

I’d enlisted for this mission because I’d become acutely aware of its absence in our psychology curriculum. The decision to invade Iraq in 2003, combined with operations in Afghanistan, means that approximately 1.5 million U.S. troops have served in battle.[1] By the end of 2006, a quarter of discharged Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have filed disability claims; over 60,000 have been for mental health issues. The Veterans Administration estimates that about 30 percent of those who spend time in a war zone develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.[2]

 

We took two books by Dr. Jonathon Shay, a psychiatrist at the Boston VA hospital, Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America, as our readings for the day. Shay’s books explore the impact of combat on the character and identity of soldiers. He focuses particularly on how combat experiences and the sense of betrayal by leaders leads to shattered personal narratives about “what’s right” and a breakdown in the very social trust that might be healing to the trauma vets have experienced.[3]

 

Reading Shay’s work, I wished that such understanding had been in place when I had done my psychology internship in the VA system in 1970. Back then, we really didn’t know about what is now called PTSD. Vietnam vets were flooding the VA system and we had no clinical language for what we were seeing. The term “PTSD” didn’t appear in the DSM until version III in 1980. The internship had a profound, conflictual impact on my professional identity as a psychologist. As a 25-year old intern with a draft exemption (as a graduate student), I felt helpless, overwhelmed, guilty, and inadequate to provide help to vets who had endured experiences I could only imagine (or, actually, couldn’t). I hoped the Psych 711 seminar would provide support to students and help me understand more deeply the contemporary challenges of working with vets and their families.

 

As we began with introductions around the seminar table, the way war touches on the families of combatants became very clear and present. One student cried as she told the group about her husband’s continuing flashbacks to his Vietnam trauma, and how his compromised sleep brought back memories of her mother’s lifelong anxiety after the firebombing of her German city during World War II. Another student related that both her uncle and her father are Vietnam Vets. Her father hardly speaks of his experiences, while her uncle seemed marked by whatever happened to him and has had difficulties in his relationships and work life; he, too, doesn’t talk much about it. The student works now with vets at a Midwestern VA hospital. Another student, now in his forties, told us that he was born while his father was completing several tours of duty in Vietnam. His father didn’t come back to the states to live with his family until his son was two years old. “I really didn’t know what to make of who he was, which made it hard between us. I think my reactions when I first met him really hurt him.” When older, the student tried to have a conversation with his father about that experience, “but he didn’t say much and I got very emotional, began to cry, and that left me embarrassed. We haven’t spoken about Vietnam since.” His father went to Vietnam as a career officer, but upon his return decided to leave the service, never explaining why.

 

The level of feeling came up quickly in our seminar room. The tears were unexpected.