From: jewell@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Larry Jewell)
Subject: 'NamVet Newsletter, Vol.4, no.6 (5/7)
Organization: Purdue University
Distribution: world 
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 01:12:00 GMT

                         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 
     
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     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
     
























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     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. 
     
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     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
     



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     Volume  4, Number  6                                 June 17, 1990

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     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
     
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     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
     
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     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.)
     












           ____________   ======= _________________/|_____...
           |           |  "  ===  |_______________| |-----:::
           |._    -    " ) |_|___|
                        / /  |___|
                       /_/















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     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

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     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.


     
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        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.
     



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        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
     


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     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
     

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     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
     



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     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
     
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     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
     



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