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EMOTIONS, SHIT. "Narrative can transform involuntary reexperiencing of traumatic events into memory of the events, thereby reestablishing authority over memory.Forgetting combat trauma is not a legitimate goal of treatment." —Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, p.192 IF YOU HAVE ESTABLISHED your own safety and sobriety, either through self-, buddy- or corpsman-aid, then you are ready to move forward. The next challenge you must overcome is figuring out how to reestablish authority over your own memory because, even [...]

GETTING PHYSICAL AT THIS POINT I have to assume two things: First, that what I’ve explained about the warrior’s journey, and how we’re only prepared for some of it, makes sense to you and, second, that you’re getting tired of background information. That information was critical to set the stage for the rest of the book—but I agree. It’s time to start hammering out the details. From here on out, the focus will be on [...]

THE VALUE OF MYTH "Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demon- strate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to interpret its mythology this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is [...]

SOCIETY'S ROLE ". . . I cannot escape the suspicion that what we do as mental health professionals is not as good as the healing that in other cultures has been rooted in the native soil of the returning soldier’s community." —Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, p.194 SOME SOCIETIES THROUGHOUT history had specific ways of helping their warriors heal the inner chasms created by combat trauma. They had rites of passage, rituals, and meaningful ceremonies designed [...]