"Coming Home" among Northern Plains Vietnam Veterans

Psychological Transformations in Pragmatic Perspective

Bibliographic Data

ID2474613
AuthorsTheresa D O''Nell, Theresa D O’nell (University of Oregon, corresponding author), Theresa D O'Nell
Year1999
Volume27
Issue4
Pages441-465
Publication date1999-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthos (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0091-2131 • E-ISSN: 1548-1352
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/eth.1999.27.4.441
OpenAlexW1988699380
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited2

The friends and relatives of Northern Plains Vietnam combat veterans sometimes say that they can recognize veterans by the "lost and faraway look" in their eyes. They say that those veterans are still in Vietnam trying to finish the war; in local terms, many combat veterans have not yet "come home." Yet some veterans have. In this paper, I trace the experiences of veterans on a Northern Plains reservation, focusing on two types of war talk and the relation of those discursive practices to a psychological, social, and moral transformation known locally as "coming home." This material reveals the symbolic, discursive, and political underpinnings of positive psychological transformation among Northern Plains combat veterans, and speaks to the question of how we construct satisfactory accounts of psychological process in cultural context

Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Military History and Strategy · Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub