War and Home—No Safe Place
War and Home—No Safe Place
This chapter proposes that many combat soldiers from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned home to confront a psychological or spiritual displacement prompted by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or moral injury. These forms of displacement threaten the soldier’s sense of safety and security in the home place. PTSD and moral injury can so invade the life of combat veterans through symptoms such as flashbacks and hypervigilance or shame and guilt that even the physical home becomes threatened. Throughout the chapter we glimpse ways that military training methods, which are intend to desensitize soldiers to killing and instill a sense of exceptionalism necessary for successful combat, create a double bind for soldiers, who must then come to see themselves as victims in order to seek effective treatment for psychological and moral injury.
Keywords: Combat, PTSD, “moral injury”, War, Soldier, Security, Safety
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