meehawl

all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned

Pray For War

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A 360-degree war, some call it, an asymmetrical battle space that threatens to injure troops’ minds as well as their bodies. But just how deep those mental wounds are, and how many will be disabled by them, are matters of controversy. Some experts suspect that the legacy of Iraq could echo that of Vietnam, when almost a third of returning military personnel reported significant, often chronic, psychological problems.

Although the shattering psychological impact of war is well known, experts have become increasingly interested in those who emerge from combat feeling enhanced. Some psychiatrists and psychologists believe that those soldiers have experienced a phenomenon known as “post-traumatic growth,” or “adversarial” growth … “If you think about all of the heroes and heroines in cultures across the world . . . all of them, in one sense or another, faced some sort of a dragon,” said Matthew J. Friedman, director of the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and a professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School. “The transformation from that encounter has been celebrated from antiquity.”

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