Reddit reviews Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character

There's a great book called "Achilles in Vietnam" by psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, who compares PTSD symptoms seen in his patients (Vietnam vets) to the descriptions of Greek soldiers experiencing psychological trauma in Homer's Iliad. It's a really interesting book -- the two main points are that PTSD is not a modern ailment but has been affecting soldiers since the beginning of history, and that honoring soldiers' experiences in a heroic narrative promotes psychological healing in numerous ways.

I watched a one man play last year that, more or less, talked about this. It was just him talking about his experiences in war and how it effected him. But also how he sought comfort in reading and then performing Shakespeare. The most interesting part is the concept of the "berserker" as a form of PTSD. A seeking requirement towards death that leads one down a destructive path. Hence the concept of removing armor and rushing into the melee.

His concept was that Margaret of Anjou was, effectively, a P.O.W and...goes berserk later. I'm not 100% sold on it, but researching it did lead me to read Jonathan Shay's novel "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character". Which was pretty amazing to read. Comparing Achilles fall into madness to PTSD and veterans was quite interesting and helpful to me.

Here's a link to an article written by the playwright mentioned and link to the book in question

You need to read Achilles in Vietnam. What you have described is the textbook psychological warfare campaign of a modern insurgency - tailored to disrupt the ability of a counterinsurgent to win a "hearts and minds" campaign.

While I've never experienced ground combat (and never hope to), this is what I wish every gung-ho "shoot dem towel-heads" agitator knew about war. War is hell. It is the most disruptive thing you can do to the mind of a civilized human being, and no amount of training can prepare for it.

That is war - where you know your enemy, you know how you are likely to die, and there are gross outlines of where there is and where there is not war. It is the sort of war we fought for hundreds of years, with battle lines, battalions, artillery fire, and tanks.

It has nothing to do with Iraq or Afghanistan. Both wars were counterinsurgency conflicts, where asymmetric strategies were were in play. I those conflicts, if you can drive enemy soldiers - frontline troops, on the ground - insane, you can win. They will become a burden to their own chains of command, and harm civilians, which can turn the populace against them. They become a drain on their societies - the psychological trauma makes it difficult to reintegrate into normal society, even normal military duty. Popular support for the war weakens - mothers and fathers see their sons and daughters come back broken and shattered. Friends see their buddies as distorted shadows of what they used to be. Other soldiers begin to fear deployments downrange.

Those strategies were implemented imperfectly, by ill-trained forces. It could have been worse, and I thank whatever gods will listen that it wasn't. Our nation is still healing from Vietnam, and it will take even longer for Aghanistan and Iraq to scar over.

Most of all, I hope you have people you can talk to. War buddies, Tricare mental health professionals, preachers, priests, girlfriend(s), boyfriend(s), wife, husband, parent, grandparent, whatever. Too many soldiers and marines die over there and don't realized till they get back. Don't be one of them. It sounds like you've got yourself together, so I'm not overly concerned, but it's something that always needs to be expressed when people come back from downrange - especially actual downrange, in the dust and dirt.

Also called "battle fatigue", "combat neuroses", and so forth. I've been reading Achilles In Vietnam. It shows the similarities in the experiences of both Vietnam Vets and the characters from the Iliad.

Jonathan Shay has written two really excellent books on the topic, focusing specifically on how the depictions of the characters of the Iliad and Odyssey portray a then-unrealised form of PTSD: Achilles and Vietnam, and particularly Odysseus in America. I'd recommend them highly - both are very well written, and accessible even if you aren't a student of psychology/Classics.

Also very relevant is this book comparing the experiences of Vietnam vets with the character and behavior of Achilles in the Illiad, and to other attestations of the "berserk state" throughout history. I recommend it enthusiastically.

Don't know about Shakespeare, but other premodern storytellers appear to have dwelled on the subject of combat trauma's effects.

I am reminded particularly of The Wanderer and The Iliad.

Depending on when you went to college, the guy might've stolen the idea a bit because Jonathan Shay wrote a pair of books published in the mid-90s to early-00s titled Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America which are academic works about the Iliad and the Odyssey using them as a lens to understand psychological illnesses in veterans who saw combat.

It seems like you're confusing morals (the right thing to do in a situation) with a blend of justification and psychological consequence. Your example of someone killing another and feeling subjectively justified does not show that killing is moral or immoral. There isn't a connection between the two. Feeling justified in killing may reduce the occurrence of psychopathological conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder, but again, this does not mean it is moral. (For an interesting, although mostly anecdotal, account of a link between justification in war and posttraumatic stress, you might want to check out Jonathan Shay's book, Achilles in Vietnam.


The people pointing to the philosophy forums are correct, you're looking more for a philosophical argument regarding ethics/morals than a psychological one.

In Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the undoing of moral character, Dr. Jonathan Shay examines the additional situational elements that are predictors of the likelihood an individual will develop PTSD.

LtCol Grossman has also written on this subject in On Combat and On Killing.

Shared experience, supportive debriefing, command climate, fatigue level, witness to/participation in crimes or atrocities, cover-ups, moral conflict, relationship to wounded/killed... all of these things shape the experience.

A well-trained warrior may have no regrets or disturbances at having killed numerous enemy troops or even losing comrades if he was well cared for and supported by his command and unit.

But an under-prepared & overly fatigued warrior who saw injured children, or was involved in actions that terrorized civilians, while a member of an abusive command and separated from his buddies may experience moderate to even severe PTSD.

There is much more to PTSD than the volume of fire to which one was exposed or the MOS and duty assignment that may be reflected in paper records.

eh, i feel like part of PTSD requires you to know you wont respawn. While dying in a game has consequences that do invoke a pavlovian reaction, they dont hit as primal of an instinct as "DONT DIE". Then again, I have no experience in psychology, so I could be totally wrong.

Though if anyone is interested, there is a book called Achilles in Vietnam that really breaks down root causes of PTSD into simpleton terms for idiots like me. There was a follow up book called Odysseus in America, but I never read that so i can't say to its value.

Why they react the way they do?

They react the way they do because their themis, what their cultural context and way of ordering the world views to be "correct", as described by Jonathan Shay, holds that women are either saints or whores by virtue of their sexual conduct, and when they have a sexual experience, they feel used up, like Elizabeth Smart did. Here she is explaining why she didn't try harder to run away:

>"I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you know longer have worth, you know longer have value...Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.” She said she felt so dirty and filthy after being raped, and that alone, can keep someone who is a victim of human trafficking or sexual violence, from trying to escape or run for help.

The problem is that these feelings can come about from any sexual experience, because any sexual experience other than sex in a marriage violates the girl's themis, absorbed from the culture and then internalized. It says nothing about mens rea, but instead frames things in terms of "strict liability", when only the outcome matters. As such, consensual sex that's regretted, drunk sex, sex that results from poor communication or no communication, any and all of these things can engender feelings of being "a chewed up piece of gum" and destroy the girl's identity and sense of belonging in the world.

Then, after the conservative fundamentalists are done with the girl's brain, the liberal radical feminists get in there and enshrine her feelings of brokenness and worthlessness, because it is politically expedient for them to have martyrs to use to whip up a public outcry and generate more fundraising. Never mind that this might not be psychologically best for the recovery of the people who they claim to advocate for.

>Though some feminists regard “rape equals devastation” as sacred fact, the notion that a man can ruin me with his penis strikes me as the most complete expression of vintage misogyny available.

The real problem isn't men or the male sex drive, or even rapists. The real problem is elements of a culture, promulgated by both men and women, that slut-shames and tells women that their self-worth is dependent on what happens with their vaginas.

No, the problem is society itself, at both ends of the political spectrum, and as long as these poor girls are being told by everybody that a normal place and identity no longer exists for them, that they can only be whores or martyrs, social propriety can be damned.

So while you are perfectly free to disagree with me, you would do well to make fewer assumptions about other people's efforts and observations, before you try to silence them.

I'll just leave this here: Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character; Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming.

A great book on the topic is 'Achilles in Vietnam' by Jonathan Shay.
https://www.amazon.com/Achilles-Vietnam-Combat-Undoing-Character/dp/0684813211/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=achilles+in+vietnam&qid=1569532271&s=gateway&sprefix=Achilles+in+viet&sr=8-1
He compares the depiction of ptsd in the Iliad with accounts of Vietnam veterans, where their experiences align and where they differ.

In a chapter that is fresh in my memory he argues people may have suffered less from ptsd in wars like the Trojan one because of how the enemy was seen among other things. A subhuman thing, vermin in Vietnam, as opposed to an equal, noble opponent in antiquity.

According to psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, very much so. He is noted for the following books comparing Homeric myths with PTSD:

Achilles in Vietnam

Odysseus in America

Read a pretty good book on this topic in grad school if you're interested: Achilles in Vietnam

Achillies in Vientam
http://www.amazon.com/Achilles-Vietnam-Combat-Undoing-Character/dp/0684813211

It's about the mentality of soldiers in combat and combat, using Homers Illiad as a way of showing that PTSD and combat stress is the same no matter the era. It's nuts. My highschool english teacher was a Green Beret and it was literally the only book or published work of any sort he deemed appropriate for recalling Vietnam. Pretty grim.

This book does an amazing job of exploring the things mentioned in the post. It brings humanity and a better understanding of our war veterans. It's completely changed the way I see our vets.

Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character

Read "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character," by Jonathan Shay. Shay is a psychiatrist who worked closely with Vietnam vets, and he makes a pretty convincing case that Homer is doing his best to describe PTSD in the Iliad. His advocacy caused a sea change in the Pentagon's treatment of veterans with PTSD.

I read this book as an undergrad in a military history class. It focuses on Vietnam but I think the same thing could be said for today. The book has its flaws but it makes the point that due to a lack mourning time the shock of battle is delayed until the surviving combatant is distant and far away from the site of death, particularly the death of his comrades.

Edit: tl;dr The advent of fast transport took the mourning process away from the battle field. The book looks at the Battle of Troy where Greek soldiers mourned the death of their soldiers instantly versus the Vietnam war where injured soldiers were taken off the field of battle often times within hours. Their fellow soldiers only felt, realized, or knew of their death hours, days or weeks and sometimes months later.