Psycho"therapy" and the Myth of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

I will tell the story of my work with several individuals suffering from so-called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. I will widen the story's focus to include the role that war has in making human life meaningful and how the way we currently deal with returning soldiers helps insure that while we pray for peace we insure the reality of the next war. I will reprise how the myth of mental illness and the role played by the mental health industry based on Psychiatry silences the voices of those veterans that are filled with fear, rage, shame, guilt and profound feelings of betrayal at the hands of the politicians that sent them to war. I will suggest that when those of us fail in our role as citizens to speak out against those who glorify war we not only insure the reality of the next war but we abandon those soldiers seeking to create new meaningful, creative and loving lives. I will argue again that anyone can be a psycho"therapist" for themselves and others if they learn how to say and to listen to that which society says is unsayable.