Service Members and Veterans Initiative Blog

At the January meeting in New York, 42 participants attended an Open Forum on Next Steps featuring Carol Tanenbaum, co-founder with Judith Broder of The Soldier's Project, a nonprofit organization of mental health. Among Carol Tanenbaum's key points:

• "We are all affected when our nation goes to war";
• The effects of recent wars must be understood within the context of intergenerational effects of past wars;
• Analysts have valuable experience and can be uniquely helpful in dealing with psychological trauma but must study military culture and understand the importance of healing within a community [as described by Jonathan Shay in Achilles in Vietnam];
• In treating trauma, it is essential to meet patients where they are, build safe relationships and engage multiplicity, and;
• Analysts must confront their own fears and personal responses to trauma and seek support and supervision from colleagues.

If, like me, you were trained long before there was such a diagnosis as Traumatic Brain Injury, a basic overview of the current thinking about this disorder may be very welcome.

The New Center for Psychoanalysis is sponsoring a conference on March 14, 2013 entitled "Psychoanalysis and War: Treating Soldiers and Veterans on the Frontline and the Home Front."

Wars aren't easily ended. Even when hostilities end and service members come home, there is a great deal of work to be done to ease the transition to peacetime. Most of the time this is described in terms of helping the service members and their families be reintegrated into civilian life.

A documentary called Higher Ground (Michael Brown, 2012) was screened at the Rubin Museum in lower Manhattan in mid-February, 2013. The film traces the experience of 11 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as they seek redemption and meaning climbing in the Himalayas.

APsaA's 2012 Excellence in Journalism Award was given to Mark Massé for "Transformer," a chapter in his book, Trauma Journalism: On Deadline and in Harm's Way. The award recognizes writing that significantly contributes to the public's understanding of psychoanalytic principles and advances the understanding of human relationships or the life of the mind. 

Writing a narrative of a traumatic experience can be an essential part of healing from war trauma. The concept of healing psychic wounds through constructing a narrative that is witnessed by others is familiar to psychoanalysts.

A highly recommended read: A post about the connection between psychoanalysis and helping veterans on Rod Deaton's blog, the Paving the Road Back.

http://ptsdandcombat.com/2013/01/21/psychoanalysis-by-surprise-apartheid-war-and-the-new-york-subway/

According to a story in the December 7 Military Times, The Department of Veterans Affairs will add five medical conditions that, if diagnosed in conjunction with documented brain injury, will automatically confer "service connected" status. 

The stories are becoming tragically familiar: statistics for military and veteran suicides rival combat as a cause of death among those who have served. Return to civilian life can be problematic for many veterans and their loved ones – at best, it is a significant readjustment stress for everyone involved.