Beyond the Universal Soldier

Combat Trauma in Classical Antiquity

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20057542
AutoresJason Crowley (0000-0002-1836-2777, autor correspondente)
Ano2014
Páginas105-130
Data de publicação2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoCHAPTER
PeriódicoCombat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraPalgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/9781137398864_6
OpenAlexW2318586109
ISBN9781137398864
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11
Referências citadas94

Like an epistemological echo of Donovan's famous song The Universal Soldier, the belief that the combatant's susceptibility to post-traumatic stress disorder/combat stress injury 1 is diachronically universal is slowly gaining ground. 2 Gabriel, for instance, argues that the experience of close-quarters battle would leave ancient armies burdened with thousands of psychological causalities. 3 Shay offers an influential reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey as tales of both Achilles' and Odysseus' adverse psychological reactions to intense combat. 4 Tritle argues, similarly, that Epizlos, the uninjured Athenian hoplite who, according to Herodotus, went blind during the battle of Marathon, was suffering from conversion disorder, 5 that Aristodemos' voluntary death during the battle of Plataea was motivated by survivor guilt, 6 Xenophon's portrait of the Spartan 1 This terminology, of course, reflects not only the value judgments attracted by this contentious subject, but also the breadth of human experience it covers (see, for instance, Shay's foreword to Figley and Nash's excellent edited volume Combat Stress Injury: Theory, Research, and Management (London, 2007), as well as W. Nash, 'Combat/Operational Stress Adaptations and Injuries', pp.33-63, in the same volume). For the sake of analytical clarity, and to avoid the confusion entailed by the adoption of often indistinct and overlapping typologies (such as combat related PTSD, combat shock, battle fatigue, perpetration induced PTSD etc), this article uses both terms as shorthand for the full range of adverse psychological reactions to combat. 2

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Battle · Combat stress reaction · Combatant · Literature · Portrait · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Sight · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Military History and Strategy · Psychology · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence