I've been enjoying reading Gerald Nicosia's exhaustive chronicle, Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement, which we blogged about earlier, here. It's hard to read it without appreciating both the tendency of history to repeat itself (even this recently, from Vietnam to now); and also the quality of the few greats who really stood out for doing important work in bringing the PTSD diagnosis into the modern era. One such great was Robert Jay Lifton, M.D., a psychiatrist, Yale professor, and author of Home from the War: Learning from Vietnam Veterans, about whom Nicosia makes this wonderful remark:
"It was to Lipton's credit that he took the step no one had yet ventured, wading hip deep into the mental and spiritual wreckage of the war to begin a systematic effort to patch up the survivors."
It's significant that at the time, no one had yet "ventured" that -- one wonders whether today much on that front has really changed. There are a few, maybe, but the "mental and spiritual wreckage" continues both to abound, and to devastate the survivors.
