The combat soldier

Abstract

The Gulf War illness (GWI) problem is seen as a postwar syndrome related to veteran discontent rather than as a new phenomenon. It is here proposed that application of social psychiatric thinking and workers' compensation experience can help in understanding the problem. Social psychiatry has been neglected in the training of so many psychiatrists that many of them fail to understand the Army as a community and to recognize that a community's parts may develop symptom neuroses. Most psychiatrists, however, do know that a symptom neurosis will not disappear until it no longer serves its purposes. The young soldier may know that he is being trained for combat duty but manages to distance himself from the terrible realities of military combat by creating a psychic reality that protects him. Social psychiatric emphasis is used to describe his response when brought face to face with himself as a combatant with overwhelming responsibilities and genuine lethal danger. The brilliance and relevance of social thinking is demonstrated by examples from the works of Gustave LeBon and Georg Simmel so that its application to present-and future-military problems may be brought into focus. Copyright © by Association of Military Surgeons of U.S., 2000.