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The
Real Cause of Psychiatric Casualties
Today
the science of psychology knows that it is not fear of death
or injury that causes psychiatric casualties. Modern society
pursues fear through everything from roller coasters, to
action and horror movies, to rock climbing, and a hundred
other legal and illegal means. Fear itself is seldom a cause
of trauma in everyday peacetime existence, but facing close-range
interpersonal aggression is a traumatizing experience of
an entirely different magnitude.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric
Association affirms that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) "...may be especially severe or longer lasting when
the stressor is of human design." The DSM goes on to
note that PTSD resulting from natural disasters such as
tornadoes, floods, and hurricanes is comparatively rare
and mild, but acute cases of PTSD will consistently result
from torture or rape. Ultimately, like tornadoes, floods,
and hurricanes, bombs from 20,000 feet are simply not "personal"
and are significantly less traumatic -- to both the victim
and aggressor.
When snakes, heights, or darkness causes an intense fear
reaction in an individual it is considered a phobia, a dysfunction,
an abnormality. But it is very natural and normal to respond
to an attacking, aggressive fellow human being with a phobic-scale
response. This is a universal human phobia. More than anything
else in life, it is the potential for intentional, overt,
human confrontation that has the greatest ability to modify
and influence the behavior of human beings.
What this means to us today is that the entire body of psychology
and psychiatry, and the entire body of history in this field,
all affirm that a soldier, police officer, or peacekeeper
on the street is infinitely more effective at influencing
behavior than any quantity of impersonal bombs in the air,
no matter how "smart" those bombs may be. Anything
else is simply wishful thinking.
Psychologically,
aerial and artillery bombardments are effective, but only
in the front lines when they are combined with the threat
of the physical attack which usually follows such bombardments.
This is why there were massed psychiatric casualties following
World War I artillery bombardments, but World War II's strategic
bombing of population centers were surprisingly counter-productive
in breaking the enemy's will. Such bombardments without
an accompanying close-range assault, or at least the threat
of such an assault, are ineffective and may even serve no
other purpose than to inoculate the enemy and to stiffen
his will and resolve.
This is why inserting combat units in the enemy's rear is
infinitely more important and effective than even the most
comprehensive bombardments in his rear, or attrition along
his front. We saw this in the early years of the Korean
War when the rate of psychiatric casualties was almost seven
times higher than the average for World War II. Only after
the war settled down, lines stabilized, and the threat of
having enemy in rear areas decreased, did the average rate
go down to that of World War II. Again, just the potential
for close-up, inescapable, interpersonal confrontation is
more effective and has greater impact on human behavior
than the actual presence of inescapable, impersonal death
and destruction.
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