Whether the trauma had occurred ten years in the past or more than forty, my patients could not bridge the gap between their wartime experiences and their current lives. Somehow the very event that caused them so much pain had also become their sole source of meaning. They felt fully alive only when they were revisiting their traumatic past.

young warriors, not so young now, because we failed them. They were made into warriors by incompetent ritual elders who were ritually tone deaf, a bunch of drill sergeants who knew how to turn people into “shadow warriors” who did not know the moral responsibilities of a true warrior. When the young warriors came home, we failed to bring them

The history of trauma and its stories has always been politicized. Consider the case of hysteria, that mysterious illness that captivated male doctors from antiquity until the beginning of the twentieth century.