'It's an incredible honor in anyone's life to win the famed "genius grant" -- the MacArthur Foundation's nod to someone who's doing important, creative and interesting work, that comes with a generous stipend to continue pursuing your passion. It's even doubly an honor when one of this year's recipients is none other than the incomparable, longtime Friend of Vets, Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D., whose groundbreaking work is mentioned frequently on this blog. Shay wrote two of the key texts in understanding combat trauma and how healing happens in community: both Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. He practices what he calls "preventive psychiatry," and spends much of his time teaching the military how to avoid practices that create more psychological and moral trauma for combatants. He has worked with Vietnam veterans for the last 12+ years in the Boston area, as a staff psychiatrist at the VA. His writing, however, has reached a wider audience, and for years his work has been cited by many other prominent figures, including Nathaniel Fick, and has been included on the U.S. Marine Corps Commandant's essential reading list.
If you want to read an interesting bio of Dr. Shay that was published some years ago in the New York Times, go here. If you want to see his selection by the MacArthur Foundation, along with the other "Genius Grant" recipients, go here. If you want to hear a short interivew with Dr. Shay by a Boston talk radio station, WBZ Radio 1030 today, go here. (And if you'd like to see what else the Marine Corps is reading, click here.)
Enormous congratulations to Dr. Shay for this fantastic honor for his essential work. And apologies for my attempt at cropping a picture of Dr. Shay in with a photo of the Parthenon -- because I really do think we ought to give more social honor to the Friends of Vets -- here's an attempt to enshrine one of the best!
