Achilles in Vietnam

by Shay, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780689121821
• ISBN10: 0689121822
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-05-01
• Publisher: Atheneum

Summary

Compares the experiences of soldiers in the Vietnam war with those in the Trojan War, and examines how the stresses of combat affect the individual soldier

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Author's Caution to Veterans, Their Families, and Their Friends	xii
Introduction	xiii
PART I
Betrayal of ``What's Right''	3	(20)
An army is a moral construction	5	(1)
Victory, defeat, and the hovering dead	6	(3)
Some veterans' view---What is defeat? What is victory?	7	(2)
Dimensions of betrayal of ``what's right''	9	(11)
On danger in war	9	(1)
The fairness assumption	10	(4)
The fiduciary assumption	14	(6)
Soldiers' rage---The beginning	20	(3)
Shrinkage of the Social and Moral Horizon	23	(16)
One American soldier's social space	23	(1)
Tracking Achilles through social space	24	(4)
Desertion	26	(2)
Simplification of the social world to a single comrade	28	(1)
Achilles' character before his psychological injuries	28	(2)
Respect for the dead	29	(1)
Taking prisoners alive	29	(1)
Moral luck	30	(2)
War destroys the trustworthy social order of the mind	32	(3)
Combat is a condition of captivity and enslavement	35	(2)
``Don't mean nothin''---Destruction of ideals, ambitions, affiliations	37	(2)
Grief at the Death of a Special Comrade	39	(30)
Soldiers' love for special comrades---Vietnam and Troy	40	(4)
Homer on the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos	41	(2)
The specialness of the special comrade	43	(1)
Portrait of Patroklos	44	(5)
The grief of Achilles	49	(6)
Being already dead	51	(2)
Grief and the warrior's rage	53	(2)
Communalization of grief in the Iliad and in Vietnam	55	(12)
When were the dead brought to the rear?	57	(1)
Who brought the dead to the rear?	58	(1)
When were the dead mourned?	59	(1)
What was the level of trust, safety, and social cohesiveness in the rear during mourning?	60	(2)
Use of mind-altering substances	62	(1)
Who wept for the dead, and how were tears valued?	63	(2)
Who washed and prepared the dead for cremation/burial and shipment home?	65	(2)
The importance of thwarted grief	67	(2)
Guilt and Wrongful Substitution	69	(8)
Abandonment and wrongful substitution	69	(3)
Deserving the death sentence	72	(1)
Homecoming renounced	73	(1)
An unintended outcome of religious education?	74	(1)
Soldier's rage---Fatal convergence and completion	75	(2)
Berserk	77	(26)
Triggers of the berserk state	77	(4)
``Don't get sad. Get even!''	81	(1)
Characteristics of the berserk state	81	(13)
A beast	82	(2)
A god	84	(2)
Above and beneath---Disconnection from human community	86	(1)
Loss of all restraint	86	(3)
Revenge as reviving the dead	89	(1)
The berserker in the eyes of other soldiers	90	(1)
Flaming ice---Berserk physiology	91	(3)
Aristeiai of American soldiers in Vietnam---The differences	94	(4)
Naked berserkers and Achilles' invulnerability	97	(1)
Clinical importance of the berserk state	98	(5)
PART II
Dishonoring the Enemy	103	(18)
The enemy as enemy: Images in common to Vietnam and Troy	104	(1)
Image of the Vietnamese enemy	105	(1)
Homer: Valor does not depend on contempt for the enemy	106	(9)
Enemy soldiers talk to each other at Troy	107	(2)
Soldiers talk about the enemy at Troy	109	(2)
Religious roots of the enemy as vermin: Biblical anti-epic in 1 Samuel 17	111	(4)
Clinical importance of honoring or dishonoring the enemy	115	(6)
Abuse of the dead enemy	117	(4)
What Homer Left Out	121	(16)
Deprivation	121	(3)
Friendly fire	124	(1)
Fragging	125	(2)
Suffering of the wounded	127	(2)
Civilian suffering	129	(8)
Suffered by all civilians during war	129	(4)
Suffered exclusively or primarily by women after defeat	133	(4)
Soldiers' Luck and God's Will	137	(12)
The social spectrum of luck	137	(4)
Equipment failure	141	(3)
Attributing blame	144	(3)
Job's paradox and the possibility of virtue	147	(2)
Reclaiming the Iliad's Gods as a Metaphor of Social Power	149	(16)
Armies as creators of social power	150	(4)
Gods as REMFs	154	(6)
Heartlessness of the gods	154	(1)
Readiness to ``waste'' lives	155	(2)
Sunk-costs argument	157	(1)
Sinister demographic agendas	158	(1)
The gods as inconsistent, unreliable, inattentive, distractible	159	(1)
Homeric irony and god's love	160	(5)
PART III
The Breaking Points of Moral Existence---What Breaks?	165	(18)
The official diagnostic criteria for PTSD of the American Psychiatric Association	166	(3)
PTSD and the ruins of character	169	(1)
Persistence of the traumatic moment---Loss of authority over mental function	170	(3)
Untrustworthiness of perception	170	(2)
Memory	172	(1)
Persistence mobilization for danger	173	(2)
Persistence of survival skills	175	(3)
Persistence of betrayal	178	(1)
Persistence of isolation	179	(1)
Persistence of suicidality	179	(1)
Persistence of meaninglessness	180	(1)
Destruction of the capacity for democratic participation	180	(3)
Healing and Tragedy	183	(12)
Is recovery possible?	184	(3)
Return to ``normal'' is not possible	184	(1)
We don't know if recovery is possible	185	(1)
Yes---Recovery is possible	186	(1)
What is the best treatment?	187	(6)
Why and how does narrative heal?	188	(5)
The law of forgetting and denial	193	(2)
Conclusion	195	(16)
Prevention	196	(8)
Protect unit cohesion by unit rather than individual rotation	198	(1)
Value griefwork	198	(2)
Do not encourage berserking	200	(1)
Eliminate intentional injustice as a motivational technique	201	(1)
Respect the enemy as human	202	(1)
Acknowledge psychiatric casualties	203	(1)
War is not an industrial process	204	(1)
Pissing contests	205	(1)
Species ethic	206	(5)
Notes	211	(22)
Bibliography	233	(4)
Index	237