Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
Note from Arnold Richards:
Read this and weep. Supporting the war is not the same as supporting our troops
Click Here to Read: “Concern mounts over rising troop suicides, ” an Article on CNN.com.
Click Here to Read: Article on Denial in The Corps by Kathy Dobie in the Nation.
Explore posts in the same categories: Controversial
February 13th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Social and political conflicts in our times have given rise to unprecedented excesses of organized violence of a wide heinous variety.Despite massive losses and deaths, a host of traumatized people have returned to society. They are not easily reintegrated on re-entry, due to their own reactions, as well as socciety’s reluctance to look into the eyes of those who had an encounter with the Angel of death.
Mutual mistrust leaves room for the heroic only, while denying the shame of suffering, the fear of death and similar messages brought back by survivors. Those of us who treat such casualties have dificulty meeting the clinical challenges of trauma that occur after violent social changes.
Societies’ victims, the traumatized ones, and its helpers, share a historical heritage and a common horizon, regardless of whether they admit it or not. The treaters of those so afflicted should be able to accept those who are exposed to utter aggression and should be as compassionate as they may be.
In Jerusalem, this eternally embattled city of peace, provides us with the enduring hope for a prophetic vision. Realist and humanitarian that he was, Freud warned us not to expect this from psychoanalysis. The mills of therapy and the mills of education grind very slowly and each generation of mankind has to be recivilized in its turn. A universal therapy for mankind is beyond our grasp. We are forced to do as Freud said, that is, to make the best with what we have at hand.And this is challenge enough for our common hope for the future of mankind.
Sheldon M. Goodman,Ph.D.