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Odysseus In America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. By Jonathan Shay. Foreword by Max Cleland and John McCain. New York: Scribner, 2002. 329 pages. $25.00. Reviewed by Dr. Douglas V. Johnson II (LTC, USA Ret.), Research Professor, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College.
Shay's first book in this duet, Achilles In Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, was remarkable both for the truths it spoke that reached beyond the theme and immediate purpose of the book, and the manner in which it reopened the continuing sore of US Army personnel management systems. In one very important sense, this new book continues the latter theme.
Until I read Odysseus in America, I had only fond memories of Odysseus. Shay destroys those memories and paints a picture of a scheming, lying, self-serving conniver. So much for my classical education. But out of the wreckage of this image, Shay establishes a compelling framework for dealing with the returning combat veteran. Once again pulling from his experience as a staff psychiatrist in the Boston Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic, Dr. Shay's research rests in significant measure on his patients, Vietnam veterans with severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Last year, his work won him a position as Visiting-Scholar-at-Large at the US Naval War College.
Shay raises the issue of how a soldier adapts to the requirements of war, which, by their nature, contradict those of a civil environment. Odysseus, Shay relates, demonstrates success in the practice of those traits so essential to success in battle-"cunning intelligence, deception, reconnaissance, manipulation, secrecy, spying . . . ." How then does the soldier,...