Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers

by Nancy Sherman

Movies like American Sniper and The Hurt Locker hint at the inner scars our soldiers incur during service in a war zone. The moral dimensions of their psychological injuries--guilt, shame, feeling responsible for doing wrong or being wronged-elude conventional treatment. Georgetown philosophy professor Nancy Sherman turns her focus to these moral injuries in Afterwar. She argues that psychology and medicine alone are inadequate to help with many of the most painful questions veterans are bringing home from war. Trained in both ancient ethics and psychoanalysis, and with twenty years of experience working with the military, Sherman draws on in-depth interviews with servicemen and women to paint a richly textured and compassionate picture of the moral and psychological aftermath of America's longest wars. She explores how veterans can go about reawakening their feelings without becoming re-traumatized; how they can replace resentment with trust; and the changes that need to be made in order for this to happen-by military courts, VA hospitals, and the civilians who have been shielded from the heaviest burdens of war.2.6 million soldiers are currently returning home from war, the greatest number since Vietnam. Facing an increase in suicides and post-traumatic stress, the military has embraced measures such as resilience training and positive psychology to heal mind as well as body. Sherman argues that some psychological wounds of war need a kind of healing through moral understanding that is the special province of philosophical engagement and listening.

Genres: Nonfiction, War, Philosophy, Politics

234 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 8, 2015

About the author

My introduction to the psyche of the soldier, in a sense, goes back to my father and my childhood. My dad was a WW II vet who never talked about “his” war, though he carried his dogtags on his keychain for 65 years. The war never left him; he took it to the grave; and he always felt that his burden was private. I suspect I always felt that the burden ought to be shared, or at least, that I ought to understand it better.

The chance came when I was appointed the first Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy in the mid-nineties. I had been an academic in ethics for most of my career, focused on ethics and the emotions, in ancient and modern philosophy. I also had a background and research training in psychoanalysis. For the first time in my life I became a civilian in a military world, and I began to understand better the secret world of my dad. I started teaching and writing about the moral challenges of going to war and returning home, and have been immersed in that research ever since. The issues couldn’t be more urgent for a nation now fighting wars on two fronts for almost a decade.

The Untold War is my best effort at allowing soldiers to open up their hearts and tell their stories. I have listened to those stories with the ear of a philosopher and psychoanalyst, but also with the ear of a daughter, who always felt that she needed to understand more about what her father went through. And I have analyzed those stories in language that steps outside the academy—in terms my dad would have understood. I talk about the visible and invisible wounds of war; posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and resilience; military suicide and its prevention; military honor, guilt, and shame. Military families need to know that we who do not have loved ones serving are doing our best to understand and help those who do.

Officially, I am a distinguished University Professor in Philosophy at Georgetown and an affiliate at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. I also teach some semesters at Georgetown University Law Center. I taught at Yale for seven years before coming to Georgetown.

I spend much of my free time outside. I run most days, swim in an outdoor pool a few times a week, and hike and bike on occasion. Here I take lessons from my grown children: My daughter Kala was a competitive swimmer at Dartmouth, and my son Jonathan has cycled across the country for Habitat for Humanity with a Yale group; he also led cycling tours in Europe. But as my daughter once said to me, “Mom, you’re athletic, but no athlete!” As a family, we love to hike-- in the Northeast, the Rockies, the Lake District in England, and in years past, Corsica. But our local Billy Goat trail, on the Potomac, is also a favorite. I adore dancing—modern dance – something I have been doing since college. Come summer, I turn into an obsessive gardener and on a not-too-buggy D.C. day, I like nothing more than losing myself in the mud. Cooking is also a serious family business. My husband Marshall, also known as “chef Marcel,” is a remarkably good cook.

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philosophy + modern treatment of soldiers = powerful stuff. Sweeping, informed narrative dating back to Seneca and earlier on how civilians should interact and treat those whom we have asked - either directly or passively - to inflict violence on others. The author definitely knows what she is talking about, and anyone who has been curious about what else to say other than 'thank you for your service' will find this book very interesting.

[Tg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nancy just gets it...It's one thing to be called a Hero, and to try to Stoically hold the wounds in,
but it is not the most "emotionally" healthy thing to do.
What the returning veteran needs is love and empathy..yet only a minute percentage understand what are the wounds, scars, and burdens of military service extract.
Many Veterans have survivor's guilt, and lack of purpose upon returning.

"So you have had to bury someone you have loved, now go look for someone to love " Seneca's Epistles

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I had nicer things to say about this book, because it strikes me as well-intentioned (to the extent that I understand Sherman's project at all). I have to confess that I have a difficult time understanding what much of the work that goes under the heading "philosophy of emotion" is getting at, and the basic purpose and message of this work are puzzling to me. The book doesn't read as conventional philosophy, but neither does it seem targeted toward veterans or the civilians who play a role in reintegration. Too much is promised in the way of helping civilians to appreciate their collective moral obligation toward those who serve: I don't feel as though I understand any better than before how civilians are meant to play a part in healing moral injury, nor what (beyond the commonsensical) can be done to help build necessary trust between soldier/veteran and society. Sherman related some compelling and tragic tales, but I gained no coherent sense of message or lesson or even analytic insight.

In the end, I can't help but feel like I missed something here.

The book contains a number of small copyediting errors, and a couple of minor military-related factual mistakes will shake the confidence of the reader who has more than a passing acquaintance with the armed forces. One howler in particular is repeated throughout the book, inexplicably: Sherman's undeviating practice of referring to Air Force personnel as "wingmen" instead of "airmen." On several occasions, she writes of "soldiers, sailors, wingmen, and Marines." One would think that an editor was playing a joke on her if the subject of the book were not so important. This strange tic has nothing at all to do with the quality of Sherman's philosophical argument (to the extent that the book includes one), but it's simply an incomprehensible error in a book that means to speak seriously to serious military subjects.

[Steve Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most important books I have read on ptsd. Having had to live with it since my return from Indochina in 1972, disregarded, misdiagnosed, and accused of malingering for years until I finally found a psychologist who had some idea about what was happening to me in the early 1990'sI have an intimate knowledge from lived experience. The so called treatments that have prevailed since then have been useless at best and destructive at worst, I finally dumped it all and started to explore the theory on my own. I have read anything that seemed relevant that I could get my hands on. This effort not only included readings on ptsd, but also psychology and Buddhist practice and meditation. Buddhist practice and meditation have been really helpful in being able to simply cope, the psychology associated with that practice the most revealing. Karen Horney, Eugene Gendlin, David Brazier and Stanislav Grof have provided a much needed structure within which to do the work.

This book along with the writings of Edward Tick are the only approaches that cut right to the guts of the problem and explain much about the problem as it presents to those who suffer and are the only authors who critically pinpoint the changes in attitudes and approaches to interaction with veterans that therapist and wider society must undertake if this exploding problem is to be addressed with any efficacy at all. I am not hopeful given my own experience anfd the massive cultural inertia that is extant and the rigid resistance of vested interests. Particularly in Australia where the medicine has been privatized and therefore it is in the interests of greater profits to keep us cycling through a failing system.

[Pavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting reflection on using stoic philosophy to deal with moral injury in a military context, and particularly during the COIN fad (and its failure) in Iraq and Afghanistan. I went to the book launch in 2015 (what a different time), but picked it back up in a reflective moment during my first Memorial Day working abroad. This is definitely an academic book, but the stories of individual servicemembers and vets keeps it engaging. None of the frameworks in here would be particularly groundbreaking for anyone who has served in the military, worked alongside it, or studied civ-mil relations. But I think it has real value for those who are just one step removed - perhaps those hoping to relate to friends, family, and coworkers who have completed military service and engage them about it without being dismissive or patronizing. Given the amount of work we have to do as a society to that end, I think it fills a valuable gap.

[Christopher Pokorny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sherman uses vignettes to engage the reality of the moral wounds of our service members in the post-Iraq/Afghanistan wars. She then explores the philosophical roots of morals, trust and recovery. Sherman sources stoic philosophers to ground the emerging exploration of moral injury in the history of civilization. There is nothing new about moral injury. Just a recovery of an ancient reality, and mining it for treatment protocols, language and modalities.

[Steven Richardson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author lost me when she repeatedly called US Air Force members "wingmen" instead of the correct "Airmen". If she can't bother to get this right then I question whether she really knows anything.