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Newsgroups: soc.veterans Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!news.nd.edu!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!mace.cc.purdue.edu!jewell From: jewell@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Larry Jewell) Subject: 'NamVet Newsletter, Vol.4, no.6 (5/7) Message-ID: <By3FC1.DM4@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> Sender: news@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (USENET News) Organization: Purdue University References: <By3Ew1.CAG@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> Distribution: world Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 01:12:00 GMT Lines: 1005 Input By: Todd Looney NAM VET Managing Editor Vietnam Veterans' Valhalla - San Jose, CA (408) 298-2740 PUBLIC APOLOGY Dear Friends, What I have to do now is one of the hardest things I believe I have ever had to face in my life. I am literally crying and trembling at this keyboard right now and cannot for the life of me imagine a more difficult task that to confess to friends that I have lied to them, and then ask for their forgiveness. But that is the task before me now. Please bear with me. A little over a year ago I committed a crime, a heinous offense which I have had to live with since, and will have to live with for the rest of my life, and one for which I was tried and convicted, and sentenced to 7 months in the Santa Clara County jail. The details are not relevant, but the fact that I came before you in the IVVEC conference and lied about them is. I begged for help, something that is not easy for me to do in the first place, but was harder because I was doing it under false pretenses. I did not lie to you out of malice, but out of fear. I was sick at the time, not that excuses the crime or the ensuing lies, but that sickness contributed to a serious state of denial which took me several months to overcome. I have been in therapy since last summer, 5 hours a week to be exact, and that therapy has helped me to find myself, to know who I am, and to finally face the person I was. I'm OK with who I am now, but I am not, nor ever can be, OK with the monster I was a year ago. I told you that it was my son, in fact, who had committed a crime, and that he was being falsely accused, and I asked you all, through the IVVEC, for financial assistance to aid in the legal battle we were undergoing. I accepted monies under that premise, not much, but that is irrelevant also. The fact is that I accepted that aid under false pretenses. It is important though for you to know that I used the money for my own defense. If you demand it back, I will honor that, I swear to you with God as my witness. Later I told you that I struck an assistant district attorney and had myself been arrested for assault. That also was not true. My son was never involved, nor was there any assault on an assistant district attorney. I alone committed a crime, but I did not suffer for it alone. I nearly destroyed my family; my wife has divorced me, but more important is what I did to the rest of my family - you. I deceived you, and I can no longer live with that. I served my "time" as honorably as I could ... "paid society" if you will. But that payment was pale in comparison to the price I paid by deceiving those who I cared about the most - my brothers and sisters, my veteran family, and you, my friends. It was nothing even close to what I paid by jeopardizing what I had labored to build in the Valhalla and the IVVEC. I *learned* from that experience though; I want you to know that. I learned by *living* what it is like in today's society to be an incarcerated veteran with a family and home on the outside to NAM VET Newsletter Page 62 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 support and wondering how he can possibly do it - not knowing what assistance there is on the outside to help - to be *denied* all but the most basic of human rights - to wonder if the rights he earned by serving in Vietnam were inalienable with regard to veterans benefits. And with what I've learned I *know* I can *help* others who are stepping into the shoes I just stepped out of - others who are experiencing the same traumatic upheavals in their lives that I managed to survive - helping others with what I now know as I did before by using what I learned in the jungles of Vietnam and Laos a lifetime ago. This experience has taught me the *true* value of life ... my brothers and sisters, my veteran family, and my friends. I have not been involved with the IVVEC or the NAM VET in quite some time. I was not mentally able to, nor did I have the internal fortitude to continue to live the lie through the IVVEC conference by acting though I had never lied to you in the first place. During my absence, Joe Peck, whom I love as dearly as though he were blood kin, took *all* of the responsibilities and made the IVVEC and the NAM VET into what it is today; an institution and a beacon of hope for Vietnam veterans throughout the country. I owe him for accepting that burden, but more than that I owe him for deceiving him. And I owe all of you. I don't know if I can ever make up for what I have done to you all, but I promise to try if you will let me. I want so very much to be involved again in the course of the IVVEC conference and that of the NAM VET Newsletter. But that it not up to me. I can not just simply walk back in as though nothing had ever happened. I will never be able to erase the memories of what I have done to you, but I ask now - *beg* - for your forgiveness and a chance to be a part of your lives again. It's in your hands now...I await your decision. Sincerely Yours, Todd C. Looney NAM VET Newsletter Page 63 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 ================================================================== W h e n t h e C h a p l a i n w h i s p e r s . . . ================================================================== By: Rev. Ed Brant NAM VETs Protestant Chaplain The Landing Zone - Fall Creek, OR (503) 747-9809 A New Fight New Weapons First, an apology. I have lost my feed for the NamVet Echo! A sad stroke to be sure. No longer can I see the needs of our Vet community in the Echo area, therefore neither can I feel the area of needed input to the Newsletter. Please bear with me. I recently came across some statistics that many of you already are aware of. WW II draft age was 35 Nam draft age was 25 Nam lasted 16 years. 8.5 million served. WW II Killed in action c. 300,000 Nam Killed in action c. 58,000 Even though we were at war longer, we lost less of our brothers, and sisters, than in any other war. What we see today is the result of a medical science that leaped ahead in the saving of lives, via a rapid removal to a field hospital, or evacuation to a medical facility. What we see isn't up to great debate. We all have friends, and loved ones who are alive, but in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives, or missing a leg, an arm or both. Men left alive and with memories that often times are bitter. Then the rest of us are ridden with Guilt, because "If I was free to act as I could have, `I' could have prevented....."that". Well, There's so much more to the battered subject. 479,000 of us have PTSD. More debate. One school say's that PTSD is a figment of our imaginations. The other school says it's real. (I KNOW that the flashback that woke me up and sitting up in bed I saw it happening all over again, was real) It's been said that 11.1 % of us have PTSD right now! And that 30% of all of us will have it at some point in our lives. The VA says that it's not curable. Some agencies say to the wife, "He'll never get better. Leave him!" Our divorce rate is astounding! I'm here today to tell you that there IS A CURE! (Wives, don't give up, and Don't leave him!) Not a wipeout of memories, not a lessening of the care factor, but a cure in the sense of the ability to function in our society, whatever society we live in. NAM VET Newsletter Page 64 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 The ability to have real love for our families, real care for our fellow vets. Jesus said: Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, give I to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Jn. 14:27 He also said in Jn 16:33, `These things have I spoken to you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.' There it is fellow Vet! Want peace? The Psychologist doesn't have peace. The Doctor doesn't have peace. The Counsulor doesn't have peace. But Jesus does. How do you get it? Easy. How do you live it? Hard. But hey! Nam was hard. If I could live through what I went through, I can do this. How about you? The easy part is getting the peace of God. Just ask Him into your heart. He'll put His LIVE Holy Spirit into you, taking the dead spirit that was there and making it alive. (We communicate with God on a spiritual level, and a dead spirit can't communicate, thus the Holy Spirit "enlivens" our dead spirit.) We ask forgiveness for sin in our lives. We forgive everyone that we have been holding grudges against. (Govt. NVA, Family, friends, bosses, Officers, the Gy.Sgt.) When we do that, (1. Ask God to come into our life, and 2. ask Him to forgive all our sin, and 3. forgive everyone involved in our "problems".) you WILL GET PEACE. Then, you go to war. Exciting? Want to fight again? Enlist in God's army. I promise you front line (whatever that is) action! I like the way LeRoy Eims in his book, NO MAGIC FORMULA (Bibical Principles for Spiritual Warfare) NavPress 1977, puts it. He speaks of the things that cause bad memories in battle, (He was a Marine in WW II - Peleliu) and says that "these things were a reality. I didn't want to; I didn't like it; but I had to face them." (Pg.ii) And a Christian Vet of the Nam will find that he has joined in a harder fight than anything he ever went through in Nam, IF he accepts the PEACE that God offers us. Oh! By the way, it's FREE! Anyway, One of the first things we learn in this type of warfare, is to face our problems head on. Guilt? Face it head on. Anger? Face it head on. Fear? Face it head on! Depression? Face it head on! Anxiety? Face it head on! Needless to say, If we are engaged in a battle, Then there MUST be an enemy. His weapons are such things as fear, guilt, depression, anger, accusation, etc. We have weapons, too. Give me some feedback, and I'll talk about them next time. (Hint: You need weapons to fight, and God has given us weapons to use) Till then, Keep in the Battle! (We win!) Rev. Ed NAM VET Newsletter Page 65 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 I I IIIII I I 88888 ITTTI o88888888 I I o888888888888o 8888 I I 888888888888888888888888 I I 88888888888888888 8888 888 xI Ix 8888888888888888 88888888 T III T 88888888888888 888888 88 I III I 8888888888888888 88888888 xI III Ix 888 888 88888888888' T I I T 88888888 I I I I 8888 xI IIIII Ix TI IT II II II II The Chaplain's Place IT | TI II --|-- II XIII | IIIX oooo o II I I II o88 888) (888) II I IIII I II o88 88888888 8888) XII I II II I IIX (88 8 88 888888) XIII III III IIIX (8 8 8 88 88 88 8 888) XIIII I I IIIIX (88 8 8 8 88888888) II II I xIIIIIx I II II ( 8 88 888 88888) II I T T T I II (8888 88 8 8 8888888) II I I I I I II (8 88888 888 88 88) II I I I I I II (8888)888 88888) II I I II II I II (8) (I8I8I) 8 oo8888888o II I I I I I II IIIII X 8888888 888BII I I I I I IIXX III X XX 88 88 88 BII I TIIIIIT I IIXXX III XXXXX 888888 88BII I .... I IIXXXXXX III XXgXXX 888 888888888XXXXXII ... IIXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXjXX II .. IIXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXpX The Vietnam Veteran XII IIXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX has relatives in the III IIIXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX Old and New Testaments III IIIXXXXXXXXXX XXXXX who also experienced loss II IIXXXXXXXXX XXX and grief, guilt and shame, II IIXXXXXXXXX XX rejection and betrayal, I IXXXXXXXXX alienation and estrangement, I IXXXX XX isolation and withdrawal. II IIXXXX II IIX Adam and Eve tried to hide from God; II II Moses, born Hebrew and raised Egyptian IIII IIII searched long and hard for his real self; II II Job, losing his children and all he owned, II II became sorely diseased; IIII III Biblical Joseph was rejected by his brothers, II II lied about and imprisoned; I Peter denied Jesus. II I "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" Matthew 28:20 NAM VET Newsletter Page 66 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 ================================================================== H e a r t s & M i n d s ================================================================== Input by: Kathleen Kelly, Ph.D. NAM VETs PTSD Section Editor The New York Transfer - Staten Island, NY (718) 448-2358 Copied from Finger Lakes Times, Geneva, NY Monday, April 30, 1990 DOCTOR HELPS VETS DEAL WITH VIETNAM By BRENDA PITTMAN AND RUDY ELDER CANANDAIGUA- Imagine living in hell for a year. You spend your days slogging through leech-invested muck or cautiously stepping along make-shift jungle trails. You worry about booby traps, about losing an arm or a leg. The elusive enemy rarely shows himself, but you know he's out there, waiting to snuff out your life. Icy fear gnaws at your gut. You keep walking, watching and worrying. It's hot, steel mill hot. Tiny rivers of sweat run down your face, and your combat gear grows heavier by the hour. At night, you rest. But there's little sleep in a combat zone. And then it happens. Mortar shells explode, sending hot chunks of jagged metal into young bodies. The clatter of machine-gun fire and the screams of the wounded fill the air. You see friends die agonizing deaths. Chaos reigns. You shoot at shadows. Finally, it's over, The dead and wounded are carted away. The cycle of life in hell starts up again, until one day you're whisked away from the bad place. Good-bye Vietnam. You're now supposed to forget about that awful year and get on with your life. It's easier said than done. Some 450,000 Vietnam veterans can't forget. They are afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a psychological condition caused by the trauma of war. PTSD sufferers generally feel alienated from society. They can't hold jobs. They have difficulty expressing their feelings. Many are filled with anger and guilt. For years, little help was available. No more. Dr. Roger Lyman is the director of a clinic at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Canandaigua that specializes in treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Counseling and group therapy are mainstays of the program. "These guys come in here and gradually open up and talk about things that are very hard to talk about," Lyman said. "Invariably they begin to open up like never before because they NAM VET Newsletter Page 67 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 know somebody else will understand and won't judge them. They gradually develop trust in us - which is very hard for them to do - and they do get better." The program also offers couples and family therapy, and counseling for spouses. Vietnam veteran Jim Robinson, the clinic's nurse/counselor, is involved in both individual and group treatment. "The first set of symptoms are similar to the problems seen in survivors of disasters such as airline crashes and earthquakes. They have nightmares and flashbacks," Lyman said. Out of the blue, PTSD suffers are mentally transported to the jungles of Vietnam where they relive the death of a buddy or find themselves in the midst of a gory battle killing the enemy. "There's an emotional numbing. The veteran has difficulty expressing a full range of emotions," said Lyman many are afraid to open up about their feelings out of fear people might think them crazy. So they drink and do drugs to numb the pain. Some take their lives. Or harm others. "Many of them have never talked about their problem or dealt with it. The extent may be that someone in a bar says something about those rotten Vietnam veterans and a fight ensues and that's the end of it," said Lyman, who has been working with PTSD veterans since about 1985. Fifteen percent of all those who served in Vietnam suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, according to government statistics. For veterans who engaged in heavy combat, the number rises to 40 percent. Lyman says certain factors about the Vietnam war contributed to the high rate of veterans suffering from PTSD. For example: * The average age of a U.S. soldier fighting in Vietnam was 19; in World War II, it was 28. * Whole units were rarely sent to Vietnam as a group. Soldiers basically went to war as individuals, joining a unit for 12 or 13 months. * In World War II, troops spent weeks returning home aboard ships. During that time, they had the emotional support of one another to come to terms with the war. Vietnam veterans found themselves at home usually within 36 hours after leaving combat. * Some World War II veterans were treated to ticker tape parades. Vietnam veterans witnessed anti-war marches and protests. * There was no clear-cut objective in Southeast Asia. " It wasn't really clear what we were doing over there," Lyman said. "And if you are laying your life on the line, you want to know why." ".. The Stars and Stripes newspaper was reporting the anti-war protesting going on at home, which added to their sense of just how bizarre their experience was in Vietnam." * In Vietnam, the enemy was everywhere. "The Viet Cong NAM VET Newsletter Page 68 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 were infiltrated into villages of South Vietnam and you didn't know if someone who was a farmer by day was a Viet Cong at night," said Lyman. * American troops sometimes were forced to kill women and children working for the enemy. Innocent civilians were murdered. "It's impossible for me to conceive that men who had those kinds of experiences would not be psychologically devastated," said Lyman. "Our men saw atrocities and often retaliated in kind and later experienced tremendous guilt. Lyman's program in Canandaigua is treating some 70 veterans. But there are many others who need help. Lyman said he wants to reach out to veterans throughout the Finger Lakes. That's why he plans to set up satellite clinics in Dansville and Ithaca. While the majority of PTSD patients are Vietnam veterans, the condition is seen in veterans from other wars. " And these clinic doors are open to those people as well," Lyman said. (Veterans interested in learning more about Lyman's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Program can contact him at 716-396-3687.) ____________ ======= _________________/|_____... | | " === |_______________| |-----::: |._ - " ) |_|___| / / |___| /_/ NAM VET Newsletter Page 69 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 Input by: Kathleen Kelly, Ph.D. NAM VETs PTSD Section Editor The New York Transfer - Staten Island, NY (718) 448-2358 THE HEALING NIGHTMARE: A STUDY OF THE WAR DREAMS OF VIETNAM COMBAT VETERANS by Harry A. Wilmer It seems to most of us that Vietnam was a long time ago, that it is past history. It still lives in the nightmares of combat veterans and the collective unconscious of us all. It is an illusion to declare that the Vietnam Syndrome is over. Denial never killed anything. In a dream seminar I directed for schizophrenic patients at the Audie Murphy Veterans Hospital in San Antonio, a Vietnam veteran I shall call Jim told his recurring nightmare. I had been listening to veterans' dreams for four years before that day, but Jim's nightmare was somehow different, and the group of 25 fellow patients who heard it were unusually affected. Jim had his nightmare several times a week for twelve years, and his terror and grief were vivid. When the session was over it struck me that while I had been listening to Vietnam nightmares for years, I had not yet really HEARD them. So I began to work analytically with Jim. We met two to three hours a week for the next three months in the hospital and less frequently for the following two years in the outpatient clinic, and I followed him off and on for the next four years. In the first two months Jim's dream was about a tragic ambush, viewed first from this angle, then from that, now about this part, then about that part, but always the precisely identical event. The dream never varied from the images of the real event -- never, that is, until after we began working. It had previously recurred hundreds and hundreds of times, and yet it was the same dream coming back again and again. I reasoned that there must be some biological or psychological purpose, some meaning in its repetition. .... Jim described his dream as if it were a film replayed in his mind, like cinema verite. The story of the dream is the narrative of the time when he, acting as point man, and another sergeant led a platoon of seventeen newly arrived men to their deaths in an ambush on their first firefight. Jim had been in Vietnam for almost a year when the ambush happened. The dream tells of sudden panic when the platoon was passing through a ravine and the Vietcong opened fire. The men fell screaming and crying, wounded and dying. The other sergeant escaped, running back to the camp, while Jim, standing in the foxhole of a VC he had killed, looked down on the slaughter and NAM VET Newsletter Page 70 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 the carnage. He held a grenade in his hand and froze. Try to imagine this: he sees a VC officer picking up he heads of each of the wounded men by the hair and shooting them, one by one. If Jim throws his grenade he will kill his own men. He waits until they are all dead, then he throws the grenade and runs until he finds his way back to the base camp. In the dream, as in real life, he returned to the ravine the next day with other soldiers to bring back the bodies. They had been decapitated and the heads put on punji sticks and smeared with shit. Some of the bodies had been mutilated in other ways. After this, Jim broke down and was medevaced back to the United States. He felt guilty, banished, rejected. For twelve years Jim had been in and out of Veterans Administration hospitals and maintained on large doses of medications. He also drank excessively, became addicted to heroin, and smoked pot as often as he could. In a vain attempt to blot out his insomnia and nightmare, he began to take six to eight downers a night -- barbiturates he bought on the street which made his consciousness hazy and even more at the mercy of the dark forces of the collective shadow which haunted him in the night with terrifying specters. When I reviewed Jim's large VA treatment records I found not a single mention of his nightmare. Even more astonishing, there was no record of his Vietnam combat experiences. Neither nightmares nor combat experiences were recorded in the VA hospital records of any of the Vietnam veterans with whom I worked. Why do you suppose their records were silent on this score? I asked Jim His reply was characteristic of the Vietnam veteran. He said, "Nobody asked me." After two months of analytical psychotherapy, Jim's nightmares began to change. At last the loop of precise dream repetition was broken, as I had hoped. He became in turn each of the people in the high drama: the executor, the executed, the soldier he killed to take his foxhole above the ravine, the other sergeant. When he was decapitated his head rolled down the hill towards the sea, and he, headless, ran to retrieve it. He explained that he could see with his soul, which came out of his neck: psyche means soul. In another month, Jim finally dreamed of me. I was a doctor in his platoon; I was in the ravine and badly wounded in the head. With the help of a woman nurse Jim rescued me and bandaged me. His feminine side was personified by the actual nurse on the VA ward (who, incidentally, was pregnant) who had been assigned especially to his care. They were working together to save the "wounded healer." He carried me back to the base, where I told the soldiers that Jim was not guilty. He was exonerated and there was a parade for him. NAM VET Newsletter Page 71 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 In a moment of naive relief, I thought that at last the story had been fulfilled and the nightmare resolved. But that was not the case, and in retrospect, I should have known better. Namely, his salvation was not in saving me in order that I might resolve his guilt and his shame, for then I would have usurped his own heroic role. No, the turning point was to be different. Dreams in which he rescued me recurred for a while. Suddenly there was a change. He decapitated me, and in another dream I decapitated him -- we both lost our heads. Finally the transformation and resolution occurred when after rescuing me he woke from his nightmare not drenched in seat, trembling and panicky, as always before, by crying. At long last he would mourn his irretrievable losses and the sacrifices in his Vietnam experience. In his grief he could at last cry and begin that search for meaning which I characterize as "the healing nightmare." The nightly dreams no longer tormented him at infrequent intervals. Now he shrugged off his dream as "Oh, that damn thing again," and lost interest in discussing it with me. The unconscious transference of the twin heroes and the healing of both the wounded and the wounded healer was played out. Jim's recovery had its ups and downs. One day about six months into his therapy, after reading newspaper stories of the nine hundred Americans who had committed suicide in Guyuana and the three thousand Vietnamese boat people arriving in America, he burst into my office demanding a gun. He had just been swimming in the pool at the Va hospital and suddenly became convinced that the Vietnamese were invading America, having tunneled all the way to San Antonio, and were coming up the drain in the pool. He was now delusional, and everyone in the hospital seemed to be Vietnamese. He took my wrist as if taking my pulse. I told him that he knew I was not going to give him a gun and he would have to sit down in my office and talk to me. We spoke about Guyana and the boat people, about how far-distant things come into our minds wherever we are, and that we would have to try to sort out his fear and rage when he calmed down. I put my arm around him and led him back to the ward, where I told him he would be restricted for a while. I told him I was going to increase his medication. A few days later he told me why he had held my wrist. He was checking to see if I was a Vietnamese invader wearing a plastic Dr. Wilmer disguise or the real thing. Convinced I was Dr. Wilmer, he did as I asked. If, as I propose, war trauma nightmares are clues to healing, then what were all the other Vietnam veterans dreaming? The literature was no help. This was in 1978 and no one had published material on the Vietnam combat nightmares. Convinced of the practical therapeutic and theoretical importance of such a study, I persuaded the chief of staff of the VA hospital to give me a sabbatical leave to devote my full time to this project. I worked with 109 veterans from 1978 to 1981. NAM VET Newsletter Page 72 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 The combat nightmare has been clearly identified as the hallmark of the psychological trauma of war. In World War I, it was called shell shock or war neurosis; in World War II, battle fatigue; and since 1979, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. My study included 103 men, and 91 of them told me 359 dreams of Vietnam. Twelve veterans recalled no war nightmares. (Since nightmares begin as long as ten years or more after the war, these twelve men are at risk all of their lives to have them. It is quite likely that these twelve veterans had dreams about Vietnam after returning home; it would be most remarkable if they had not. But this much is certain: they were not troubled by any recurring war nightmares.) I counted each repetitive dream only once, and since these nightmares recurred week after week, month after month, year after year, the total is tens of thousands of dreams. But even 359 dreams present an overwhelming number of images, memories, and feelings to try to organize and understand. This is how I went about my study: I explained to each veteran that I had not been in Vietnam but had been working for years with Vietnam veterans. I had been a captain in the navy during the Korean War. As each man came to see me I explained that I would meet him for two or three hours at least two or three different times, and I would tape-record our interviews, but I had to have their signed, informed consent. I explained I was going to write a book and give lectures and write papers based on these interviews. Three men refused to sign the consent form .... I did not use these cases. The diagnosis of PTSD had not yet been officially accepted by the VA. The usual psychiatric diagnoses created a mind-set that made it easy for the general public to slip into calling these men "VA psychos," "losers," "dope fiends," "walking time bombs," "crazy vets," "baby killers," or whatever stereotype came to mind. Anyway psychiatric labeling sidesteps the real issue, that war trauma is an existential experience, and maladaptation to it is not necessary a psychiatric disorder. Even the formal diagnosis of PTSD, which is now a legitimate way into the mental health system, often brings into play drugs and therapies that are irrelevant to those suffering from war neuroses. Automatic treatment with sedatives, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills by personnel psychologically trained to seek childhood conflicts as the cause of later distress may be useless or counterproductive. (Moreover, compensation for disability has its problems. Monthly checks, rather than a lump-sum settlement, tend to pay the veteran to be sick; and as has happened to many veterans and their families, continuing but reducing payments makes it easy to forget that NAM VET Newsletter Page 73 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 these men are not aberrations but ordinary people.) While the developmental history is important, ultimately we face an archetypal war experience. It is here that the Jungian approach offers help, insight, and meaning beyond traditional psychiatry. Talking with these veterans would sometimes open their wounds, awakening disturbing effects. For those whose interviews raised more dust than they settled, I offered psychotherapy. To my surprise, I found that even a few sessions of listening, I mean really listening with a non-judgmental motivation to help, was adequate. It was not necessary to say much. On the rare occasions when I felt that I was hearing "war stories," with embellishments or distortions or even fabrications, I ignored them. With few exceptions I accepted what each veteran told me as his truth -- his authentic individual perspective. I had no intention of trying to corroborate his history, which would have been impossible anyway. I knew that if there were more than one observer to a battle, there would be a Rashomon effect and as many perspectives as there were observers. Let me give you one veteran's war nightmare: "We came in by helicopter. My buddy and I are about two feet apart in a foxhole on top of Hill 101. We got to know each other pretty good over three or four days. We had to stay in the same foxhole. We couldn't even get out to stretch our legs because of sniper fire. I am talking with my buddy. It is real dark. He lit a cigarette and all of a sudden his head blows off. His brains come out all over me. I wake up screaming." War nightmares are a unique form of dreams. There are no other dreams like them. Freud despaired of working with or considering them because they were exceptions to his theory of dreams. They were not wish fulfillment, and they were not explainable in terms of libido theory. He did not treat any war neuroses. Jung, too, was pessimistic about treating them, saying that one had to wait and let the dreams more or less play out and stop of their own accord. However, in 1983 at Davos, Switzerland, I asked Marie-Louise von Franz, Jung's collaborator and one of the most illustrious Jungian authorities, why Jung didn't work with combat nightmares. She told me that, in fact, he did and related this (unpublished) case: A British officer came to Jung because of a war nightmare that had tormented him for several years after World War II. In the dream, the man is in his home and suddenly becomes terrified. It is night. He goes to the front door and locks it. Then the back door. He locks all the windows on the first floor. But the sense of terror and panic continues to built, and he goes upstairs and locks all the windows, but just as he begins to close the last NAM VET Newsletter Page 74 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 window a grenade explodes outside the window. This dream recurs again and again during three months of analysis, until suddenly one night, when he goes to close the last window, a roaring lion appears and the dreamer wakes in terror. Jung thought, "Ah, that's good. The instrument of danger had become an instinctual animal." And so it continues until finally one night, as the dreamer closes the last window, he sees the face of a man. Jung said to himself, "Now he will not have the dreams anymore." And that was the case. The danger had been faced and was his own reflection, and that could be analyzed. So frightening were the Vietnam combat nightmares that the veterans were usually reluctant to talk about them at all. And who wanted to listen? The American people wanted to forget Vietnam, and veterans with their grim dreams were a hideous reminder of what happened to countless veterans. The war nightmares are symbolic of our national nightmare, which is just beginning to go away. But it will not fully go away, and so we run a high risk of repeating it in another way, in another international police action, unless we face that nightmare horror -- hear it, see it, know it. Then having remembered it, perhaps we can begin to forget it when we realize that what we are facing is the personal and collective shadow, and that these are part of each one of us. Then there can be a healing, a reconciliation with the wholeness that is also holy, the centering Self, the central archetype, which is our own inner religious experience. Probably 400,000 to 500,000 Vietnam combat veterans are suffering psychologically from the aftermath of war and need help. Until now we have let the Vietnam veteran carry our odious shadow. That way we don't have to see that it is our own reflection in the window that would heal us if we faced it. This phenomenon is also described by William Broyles, a Vietnam veteran, in an article about visiting the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC: "I cried too. It was as if a common emotion held back in so many private corners was all at once coming out into the sunlight. I cried for the men who had been there, for their families, for the country, for myself. I cried because I couldn't help it. It was beyond knowing. As I stood in front of the polished granite I saw the names, but I also saw my own reflection. It feel across the names like a ghost. 'Why me, Lord?' we asked ourselves in NAM VET Newsletter Page 75 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 Vietnam. It was a question that came back as I stood there: 'Why them?' It was a terrible sadness that brought the tears. But also, beneath it, there was a deep relief tinged with guilt: my name isn't on the wall." [1] I had an unusual opportunity as a Jungian psychoanalyst to study the psychological trauma of war. I talked to combat veterans from the psychiatric wards in the hospital, from the outpatient clinic, and from the Vet Center Outreach in downtown San Antonio. I also saw veterans who were not patients but were referred by veterans I had seen. I came to the conclusion that what I was hearing -- no, what I was experiencing -- was an absolutely unique, unconscious history of the impact of combat violence on the human psyche. This was the unconscious history of the Vietnam War as reflected in the minds and souls of the men who were its psychological casualties. Thus a unique story of war emerges from the veterans' nightmares. Franz Kafka wrote: "You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have free permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided." [2] In the inner world of spirit and the collective unconscious dwell the shadow of human beings, the dark side of the psyche, the rejected, unwanted, repressed unconscious, and ultimately evil, even absolute evil. This is not an atavistic throwback but the emergence of the primitive, archaic psyche that lives in civilized humanity. Archetypes have positive and negative sides. When we face our shadow, accept it as our own, and don't project it onto others, the shadow may become positive, our so-called best energy. The negative shadow is a menace so long as it remains unconscious, unrecognized, and we fail to own it as our own. We tend to forget that the shadow is unconscious and therefore seen only in its projection as evil onto other people, things, races, ideas, and nations. For the American people, the Vietnam War revealed the American shadow in almost inescapable ways. It was pumped into our psyche's bloodstream by nightly television reports of the war in living and dying color. Horrors and atrocities are never committed only by the enemy, and not since the Civil War -- when it was brother against brother, a quarter of a million Americans died, a million men were wounded, and the slaves were freed -- has the American shadow been so agonizingly conspicuous. No one who has not known war at first hand can exactly imagine what it is like. I submit that the next most available NAM VET Newsletter Page 76 Volume 4, Number 6 June 17, 1990 way is to experience the war dream world, not as a clinical phenomenon to be reduced to psychoanalytic interpretation, but as human experience. It is no wonder people shy away from systematic, subjective study of war nightmares. They reveal information that no traditional, clinical, statistical work can reach. Statistical analyses give us impersonal facts, averages, and generalizations, in which the individual is nothing but a unit like all the other units. Such studies do not explore exceptional and unusual cases. Jim may be number 28 on my computer analysis, but no other Vietnam vet was beheaded by me in a ravine in Vietnam, and this is an interesting psychological fact. I am not particularly drawn to the horrors of war, but neither do I turn away from them. Acceptance of these horrors in another person may import hope. Listening without contempt, depreciation, or condescension means accepting the dreamer and his dreadful images and memories. That, I regret to say, is a rare healing experience. However, caution is the watchword. Inexperienced people who are not trained in dream analysis should not dive into these troubled, dangerous waters, but should know that listening itself, without ANY interpretation, allows the dreamer to retell his story, and in the process, possibly change his attitudes and dreams. It is imperative that Americans learn about the psychological impact of catastrophe in order to comprehend today's world of terror and wars. The acceptance of the Vietnam soldier is the first new order of old business. The shameful way in which our country welcomes our veterans back from Vietnam compounded the Vietnam failure in which we all shared. It played a significant part in the veterans' subsequent sufferings and alienation. A case in point: When Mike arrived at San Francisco airport, wounded frightened, feeling both guilty and proud, he told me, this is what happened: "I went to a bar at the airport and someone at the bar said, 'Well, what are you doing here? You're crazy. Why don't you get out of here?' It seemed to me that the media had depicted us as being crazy. When I left the service, I considered myself normal. I just wanted out. I did my thing and now leave me alone." Tom, who prided himself on being a grunt, had spent twenty-six months in Vietnam and survived the Tet offensive at Hue, which was captured by the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. He told me how it was when he landed in Washington, DC: "A lady came up to me and called me a 'murderer,' and she hit -- #L.W. Jewell Moderator at the Veterans Information Site (veteran@cc.purdue.edu)# #& WWII-L Listowner: "Sunday's horoscope is note worthy because of its strange,# #sudden and wholly unpredictable and inexplicable occurrences, affecting all # #phases of life." "Your Horoscope" L.A. Evening Herald Express, Sat, 12/06/41 #