Why respecting soldiers matters: moral injury, culture and trauma.

Moral injury is, simply put, the violation of “what’s right” . The Greek word themis encapsulates what is meant: “the human universal trait of commitment to people, groups, ideals, and ambitions, and of emotional upheaval when these are threatened” (Shay, 2010, p. 247).

For the soldier, moral injury occurs through witnessing or partaking in acts of extreme atrocity. Often moral injury leads to a deep sense of betrayal which sets up the conditions for rage and further acts of violence. Moral injury is a largely neglected aspect of psychological injury in the psychiatric literature, yet it is extremely important because it illuminates and transcends the bio-psycho-social lines. Furthermore, it extends the conversation of trauma into the political realm.

There is always a political dimension to trauma because it always has to do with power. For this reason the understanding of trauma has always moved in step with political movements. Those in power, then, have an ethical obligation to do their duty with integrity. And if our governments send soldiers to war on behalf of us, the people, then we too are obligated, or at the least respectfully indebted, to our soldiers. Public perception matters to soldiers, and a public which shames or neglects its veterans often exacerbates their symptoms.

Right governing thus becomes a prevention and a treatment in itself. Government and military institutions must use power in accordance with themis. Failure to do so is an ethical failure as much as it is an institutional one. By abandoning themis, leaders create the conditions for psychological injury. The capacity for social trust and cohesion is built on a culture of honesty and truth telling and it sets the container for felt safety. It is well established that a lack of felt safety is characteristic of the traumatic response. For this reason the very first phase of treatment in trauma is always the establishment of safety. Leaders who violate ethical principles, whether for sexual, financial, or careerist means, breed a culture of fear and mistrust. Those are the early cracks which, when combined with violence and combat, lead to the fracturing of good character. The soldiers resources, which allow them to regulate and adapt in the face of difficult experience, break down.

Morality acts as a kind of social glue, binding the culture together through a shared sense of themis. In military culture, the importance of this is greatly exaggerated from that of the civilian world. Its gravitas is that much more because of the always imminent threat of death. The bodies of men in war need to know whether the other bodies are to be trusted. If there is no trust, there is fear. If there is fear, the body is but one defensive step away from immobility, the domain of traumatic experience. Thus the proper and felt sense of moral cohesiveness is a biological resource for soldiers in war. When this is violated the soldier feels unsafe and the nervous system reacts accordingly. Jonathan Shay: “Culture is as biologically real for humans as the body”.

Sources

Shay, J. (2010). Achilles in Vietnam: Combat trauma and the undoing of character. Simon and Schuster.