What can Shakespeare teach us about caring for vets with PTSD? | Opinion
A society that sends warriors to protect it is obligated to help them reintegrate into civilian life.
Ancient Hebrews required warriors to undergo a purification process before they reentered camp after battle. Ancient Greece used ritualized Athenian theater to purify, heal and reintegrate veterans, expecting them not just to watch plays on themes of war but also to create and perform in them. Rome’s vestal virgins bathed returning soldiers to purge them of war’s. East African Maasai warriors underwent purification rites before being fully welcomed home.
Shakespeare was never a soldier, and he lacked our modern vocabulary for post-traumatic stress disorder. He nonetheless richly dramatizes warriors who suffer from the condition. For example,, Hotspur’s wife, in “Henry IV Part I” , is one of the great evocations in literature of the psychological toll of returning from war. She enumerates in anguished detail the symptoms manifested by her husband, who has returned physically from war but not psychically.
Organizations such as Feast of Crispian, the Veterans Center for the Performing Arts and DE-CRUIT dramatize Shakespeare’s tragic veterans to aid in the process of de-cruitment. The theory, one that Shakespeare would almost certainly endorse, is that de-cruitment is as important as, and should mirror, military re-cruitment. By watching the plays, but more important by performing in and producing them, young soldiers who had been wired for war can begin to unwire from war.
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